tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-125620692017-07-20T10:52:58.224-05:00Circle Jerk at the Square DanceThe glory hole for your funny boneBrandohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10484284471046027179noreply@blogger.comBlogger892125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12562069.post-1152813206458835412015-11-01T12:38:00.000-06:002015-11-11T16:31:20.980-06:00Project Runaway Nuclear Weapons Program<i>Best of Circle Jerk at the Square Dance. <br />Originally published July 13, 2006.</i> <br /><br /><br />NARRATOR<br />Last week on Project Runaway Nuclear Weapons Program...<br /><br /><a href="http://www.bravotv.com/Project_Runway/bio/heidi_and_tim/Tim_Gunn"><i>Tim Gunn</i></a><i> looks over some old artillery shells that Saddam Hussein is presenting. </i><br /><br />TIM GUNN<br />I understand what you’re trying to do, Saddam, and retro is very chic, but I’m just not feeling a sense of<i> danger</i> from these.<br /><br /><i>Saddam lets out an exhausted sigh and leaves the room.</i><i>Tim Gunn gets in an argument with Kim Il-Jong.</i><br /><br />KIM IL-JONG<br />I tell you, Tim, the missile will be the most devastating the West has ever seen!<br /><br />TIM<br />Kim, I appreciate your <i>ambition</i>, but it’s the 11th hour, and you still have <i>a lot</i> of work to do if you’re going to get these liquid fueled boosters off the ground. We need less posturing and more engineering.<br /><br /><i>At Iran’s table, Tim Gun speaks with Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad</i><br /><br />TIM<br />Mahmoud, I like what you’re doing, I do. It’s a great blend of covert and overt. But you’re really going to need to <i>sell </i>this, you know, make the rest of the world see through your designs, but keep the seams of your weapons program invisible in the cloak of your nuclear energy program.<br /><br /><i>Cut to Tim looking around frantically. </i><br /><br />TIM<br />Has anyone seen Saddam? Where is Saddam?<br /><br />MAHMoUD<br />Fuck Saddam, where the <i>hell</i> are my centrifuges?<br /><br /><br /><br />CUT TO<br /><i>The runway studio. </i><a href="http://www.bravotv.com/Project_Runway/bio/heidi_and_tim/Heidi_Klum"><i>Heidi Klum</i></a><i> wears a retro black 80s pants suit with a "No Nukes" T-shirt. Two men and a woman sit to her right. Saddam, Kim, and Mahmoud stand on the runway. Saddam holds some weathered artillery shells, Kim a small model rocket, and Mahmoud a centrifuge.</i><br /><br />HEIDI<br />Welcome to the final edition of Project Runaway Nuclear Weapons Program. I am Heidi Klum, and I and my three judges will decide who has the best WMD in the world. The winner will get an exclusive contract with Russian and Chinese manufacturers of weapon parts, as well as bilateral negotiations with the United States government.<br /><br />Joining me as always are designer <a href="http://www.bravotv.com/Project_Runway/bio/judges/Michael_Kors">Michael Kors</a> (<i>Michael nods</i>) and <a href="http://www.bravotv.com/Project_Runway/bio/judges/Nina_Garcia">Nina Garcia</a>, Fashion Director of <i>Elle</i> magazine.<br /><br />NINA<br />Hello.<br /><br />HEIDI<br />And this week, we have a very special guest judge, a man my sources tell me all three of you know very well...the father of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdul_Qadeer_Khan">A.Q. Khan</a>.<br /><br />KHAN<br /><i>Allahu akbar!</i><br /><br />HEIDI<br />Saddam, we will start with you. I believe when we started this challenge, you made a very bold statement...<br /><br />HUSSEIN (<i>shifting from foot to foot</i>)<br />Yes, I said that Iraq would rain fire down upon all infidels who set foot on her soil.<br /><br />HEIDI<br />And what did you end up with?<br /><br />HUSSEIN (<i>looking down</i>)<br />Some old mustard gas.<br /><br />MICHAEL<br />Saddam, what were you <i>doing</i> all that time? You had a <i>decade</i> to get something going. And what do you wind up with? Something my grandmother could buy on eBay.<br /><br />SADDAM<br />I tried, but the U.N. sanctions....<br /><br />MICHAEL<br />Are we making weapons or excuses? You need to manage your time better if you want to make it in this business.<br /><br />NINA<br />I agree with Michael. You talk and talk and talk about being this great power, but all that does is invite invasion. I also think you let all that attention from the United States go to your head. Hype doesn’t make plutonium.<br /><br />KHAN<br />Saddam, what did I tell you all those years ago? If you act like a devil, you will attract the attention of the Great Satan. With everything I gave you, I expected so much more.<br /><br />HEIDI (<i>turning to Kim</i>)<br />Kim Il-Jong...you have a nuke, yes?<br /><br />KIM<br />We have many nukes! And we are ready to unleash them on the West!<br /><br />HEDI<br />So that’s good, you completed the first stage of the challenge. But speaking of stages, what happened to your rockets?<br /><br />KIM<br />After performing gloriously for 20 minutes, they heroically plunged into the sea!<br /><br />MICHAEL<br />Oh please, I’ve seen more stamina from 18-year-old underwear models.<br /><br />KIM<br />But we have the weapons!<br /><br />MICHAEL<br />Yes, Kim, but it doesn’t do you much good to wear a terrific pair of pants with a big hole in the seat. That might be attractive to a German diplomat visiting Bangkok for six-way negotiations, but on the nuclear stage, everyone’s just going to see your ass hanging out.<br /><br />NINA<br />Kim, you’re making the mistake I see lots of young weapons designers make. You focus so much on the radioactive material that the minute you have weapons-grade uranium, you think you’re finished. But it’s all about the accessories. You need delivery systems, fail-safes, and an aluminum Louis Vuitton for the launch codes. Never overlook usability.<br /><br />KHAN<br />There is an old Islamic proverb. “He whose rocket cannot fly cannot deliver his payload.” I am afraid there is not much lift in your boosters.<br /><br />KIM<br />You are all wrong! I am Kim Il-Jong, and my rockets are fine! Look!<br /><br /><i>Kim lights the fuse on his model rocket, which sparks and then catches on fire. He frantically stamps it out. Two runway models strut out, wearing ripped up North Korean army uniforms and carrying fire extinguishers. They put out the fire and exit the stage.</i><br /><br />HEIDI<br />Mahmoud. (<i>He looks up</i>.) Can you tell us what Iran accomplished during this challenge?<br /><br />MAHMOUD (<i>clears throat, speaks robotically</i>)<br />We have enriched uranium for the purposes of civilian energy production.<br /><br />KHAN (<i>a tear runs down his cheek</i>)<br />I remember when you were a fledgling Islamic republic, just trying to gain the respect of your neighbors like Saddam. And now, countries around the world are scared of you! (<i>clasps hands together</i>) It’s like I had always hoped.<br /><br />NINA<br />I am impressed. Your civilian exterior gives the hint of a covert weapons program underneath, but everything is so seamless, I can’t tell where the centrifuges end and the subterfuge begins. That’s the kind of thing we look for at <i>Elle</i>.<br /><br />MICHAEL<br />Honey, all I can say is Bush is the violin and you’re Itzhak Perlman.<br /><br />MAHMOUD (<i>tearing up</i>)<br />Michael, that means so much to me, even if you are comparing me to a Zionist fiddler.<br /><br />HEIDI<br />The judges have decided, and now it is time for our winner. Iraq. (<i>Hussein looks at her</i>.) You more than ten years to get your program off the ground, and yet you can’t even inflict Gulf War syndrome this time. You’re out.<br /><br /><i>Saddam looks sad and leaves the runway. Two women dressed in stylish MP uniforms take him into custody.</i><br /><br />HEIDI<br />North Korea. You went far, but like Icarus, you tried to fly into the sun without a good sunscreen.<br /><br /><i>As she address Kim, the red point of a laser appears on his chest.</i><br /><br />HEIDI (cont)<br />Iran. No one knows what you have under your sleeve. It could be a Rolex, or it could be a detonator.<br /><br /><i>She pauses for dramatic effect. </i><br /><br />HEIDI (cont)<br />Iran....Congratulations.<br /><br /><i>Mahmoud breaks down into tears. Two muffled shots ring out and Kim collapses to the floor.</i><br /><br /><i>A State Department Official comes out and shakes Mahmoud’s hand. </i><br /><br />OFFICIAL<br />Congratulations, we’d like to begin bilateral negotiations first thing Monday.<br /><br />MAHMOUD<br />But we have nothing to discuss, our program is peaceful!<br /><br /><i>Everyone breaks out into a hearty laugh. </i><br /><br />HEIDI<br />Thank you for watching. <i>Auf wiedersehen</i>.Brandohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10484284471046027179noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12562069.post-61762090095898320262015-10-15T12:55:00.000-05:002015-11-11T16:33:31.546-06:00Cthulhu Party Convention Ends in Unspeakable Horror<i>Best of Circle Jerk at the Square Dance.<br />Originally published September 18, 2008</i><br /><br /><br />INNSMOUTH - The national convention for the <a href="http://www.cthulhu.com/">Cthulhu Party</a> devolved into a chaotic, malevolent orgy of macabre rituals, dreadful atrocities, and cosmic disaster that ultimately failed to produce a nominee for the president of the United States.<br /><br />Inside the black, Cyclopean walls of the Miskatonic University/Bank of America Sports Arena, the convention began on a positive note. Scaled creatures from the depths of the ocean, bat-winged abominations from the frozen voids of space, sentient pools of protoplasm, and human worshipers driven mad by the knowledge of these beings all entered to a jaunty, non-chromatic tune played on a choir of demonic flutes.<br /><br />However, all eyes and other sensory organs focused on the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elder_Things">Elder Things</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_ones">Deep Ones</a>. During the highly contested primary campaign, the two groups clashed over the presidential nomination. The Deep Ones once again argued for Cthulhu as the president, as they had since before the concept of democracy had been conceived by the races of man.<br /><br />Breaking with tradition, the Elder Things instead threw their support behind the mad god <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyarlathotep">Nyarlathotep</a>, uniting behind the slogan “Crawling Chaos you can believe in.”<br /><br />Both groups attempted to sway the independent <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mi-go">Mi-Go</a> delegates to their side, with the Deep Ones offering human sacrifices to the winged, crustacean-like creatures. The Elder Things decried this as bribery and threatened to feed the Mi-Go to the bubbling, ravenous, eye-covered <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoggoth">Shoggoths</a> if they didn’t cooperate.<br /><br />Speaking through a possessed human interpreter, the Mi-Go responded, “We did not fly all this way through the black abyss of space-time to be talked down to by a bunch of beings with cilia for brains. So <i>fhtagn</i> you, we’re for Cthulhu.”<br /><br />Amid gutteral, alien shouts of “Yes we Cthulhu! Yes we Cthulhu! Yes we Cthulhu!”, the octopod-headed high priest of the Outer Gods appeared before the delegation to accept his nomination. “My friends,” Cthulhu began, “it is time for us to put our aeons-old differences aside and instead join together, so we may return this planet back to its primordial values.”<br /><br />The Elder Things staged an immediate slither-out, but not before several of their Shoggoths smothered and absorbed the pro-Cthulhu Louisiana delegation. An epic battle broke out on the convention’s non-Euclidean floor, as psuedopods flew, wings flapped, and mouths gibbered in a horrific maelstrom of cacophonic rage that caused CNN’s political team to go insane and flee the convention. Journalist Anderson Cooper was later found in a Manhattan Starbucks, dazed, bloodied, and screaming for “a skim latte with extra AAAIIIEEE!!!”<br /><br />As the conflict intensified at the convention, the Sports Arena shook on the precipitous cliff on which it had been constructed, eventually breaking off and plummeting into the black waters of the thrashing sea, before Cthulhu could be formally nominated. While there is no confirmation of its fate, local villagers say they expect the Sports Arena to rise again from the sea sometime before the Super Tuesday primaries in 2012.<br /><br />The ending was not all bleak and horrific, however. Although his nomination remains in tatters and his followers are presumed scattered along the ocean floor, Nyarlathotep did accept an offer to join the John McCain campaign as a consultant.Brandohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10484284471046027179noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12562069.post-38444977506772747522015-10-01T22:07:00.000-05:002015-11-11T16:35:41.294-06:00Official Application for Republican Presidential Candidates<i>Best of Circle Jerk at the Square Dance<br />Originally published May 13, 2007. Now more appropriate than ever.</i><span style="font-weight: bold;"></span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /></span><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /></span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">1. Name</span>: _________________________<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">2. Occupation:</span> _________________________<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">3. Name of yacht/racehorse/summer vacation compound:</span><br /><br />_________________________<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">4. How do we know your father?</span> _________________________<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">5. Race:</span><br />a) White<br />b) Other <span style="font-style: italic;">(skip to end)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">6. Gender:</span><br />a) Male<br />b) Other <span style="font-style: italic;">(skip to end)</span><br /><br /><b>7. Age:</b><br />a) Iron<br />b) Bronze<br />c) Stone<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">8. Religion:</span><br />a) Evangelical Christian<br />b) Christian that doesn’t hate gays <span style="font-style: italic;">(skip to end unless former mayor of New York)</span><br />c) Mormon but not too Mormon<br />d) Jewish <span style="font-style: italic;">(skip to the end, turn application over, and describe your qualifications for State and Commerce Department posts)</span><br />e) Muslim <span style="font-style: italic;">(skip to the end and wait for the authorities)</span><br />f) Athiest <span style="font-style: italic;">(skip to the end and go to Hell)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9. Martial status:</span><br />a) Married<br />b) Plurally Married<br />c) Divorced<br />d) Married, Divorced, Remarried<br />e) Married, Divorced as wife lay on deathbed, Remarried, Divorced due to adultery during Clinton impeachment hearings, Remarried, Divorced after name came up in madam’s black book.<br />f) Single, neat, white, and <span style="font-style: italic;">definitely</span> not gay<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">10. Have you ever done drugs?</span><br />a) No<br />b) Only to close deals back in the 80s<br />c) Does inhaling the Holy Spirit count as a drug?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">11. Please indicate your average household income as a percentage of GDP</span>: ____%<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">12. Did you serve in Vietnam?</span><br />a) Yes <span style="font-style: italic;">(go to question 13)</span><br />b) I really would have liked to, but I had an MBA to get<br />c) I protected our shores against Viet Cong sneak attacks<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">13. Why did you serve?</span><br />a) Wanted to defend my country against communism<br />b) Dad couldn’t get servant’s son to swap lottery numbers with me<br />c) Really, really, really wanted to kill people<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"></span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">ISSUES</span><br />For the following questions, please select the answer closest to your own views.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">14. I ____ poor people.</span><br />a) hire<br />b) hate<br />c) hunt<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">15. How do you view illegal immigration?</span><br />a) A complex problem that must be handled firmly but humanely<br />b) An excellent opportunity to undermine labor unions<br />c) Immigrants are actually demons tunneling in from ninth circle of Hell<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">16. What’s your view on global warming?</span><br />a) We have to take a careful look at possible man-made influences on the environment<br />b) Hard to see climate change due to smoke produced by my factories<br />c) What part of God saying he’d take care of the birds do you not understand?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">17. Do you support a Constitutional amendment banning gay marriage?</span><br />a) Yes<br />b) No, it should be left up to the states, except in cases where states vote to allow it, then yes<br />c) Only if it includes provisions for stoning<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">18. How do you feel about tax cuts?</span><br />a) They stimulate the economy<br />b) They stimulate my portfolio<br />c) They stimulate my loins<br /><br /><b>19. _________ are the best way to prevent teen pregnancy.</b><br />a) Condoms<br />b) Condemnations<br />c) Convents<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">20. What are your views on evolution?</span><br />a) I support it<br />b) I support it, but I also support people not supporting it if they will still vote for me.<br />c) I support stickering every textbook that mentions it.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">21. How do you feel about the relationship between church and state?</span><br />a) They should be separate...in most cases...although, really, if a pastor wants to advocate a certain political party, what’s the harm?<br />b) Religious tax deductions are a sign that God loves us<br />c) I would like to put them in the same room, give them some mulled wine, put on some Psalms, dim the lights, and see what happens<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">22. Do you believe that Saddam Hussein had close ties to the 9/11 terrorists?</span><br />a) Yes<br />b) Of course, they were all Arabs!<br />c) The very nature of that question shows how much you hate freedom<br /><br /><b>23. _________ are America’s greatest enemy.</b><br />a) Terrorists<br />b) Communists<br />c) The Clintons<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"></span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">ESSAY</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">In 50 words or less, please describe why we can never leave Iraq. Your answer must include the words <i>freedom</i>, <i>democracy</i>, <i>terror</i>, and <i>The Rapture</i>:</span><br /><br />__________________________________________________<br /><br />__________________________________________________<br /><br />__________________________________________________<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"></span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">SCANDAL DISCLOSURE</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Please check any potential scandals that you may have:</span><br /><br />__ Draft dodger<br />__ Tax evader<br />__ Received illegal campaign contributions<br />__ Visited brothel<br />__ Used illegal campaign contributions to visit brothel<br />__ Smoked meth<br />__ Had sex with gay prostitute<br />__ Smoked meth while having sex with gay prostitute<br />__ Used racial epithets in my youth<br />__ Use racial epithets now<br />__ Cheated on wife<br />__ Cheated on woman who I cheated on wife with<br />__ Technically not born a man<br />__ Paid for an abortion<br />__ Performed an abortion<br />__ Was aborted but lived<br />__ Shot old man in the face on accident<br />__ Shot old man in the face after tracking him for three days<br />__ Took wife to sex club<br />__ Took wife to sex club for our anniversary<br />__ Went to sex club on anniversary without wife<br />__ Unable to read diploma from Yale<br />__ Voted Democrat<br />__ Have acted like a complete hypocrite in my private life<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">I hereby swear that the information presented on this application is true and correct unless some nosy, freedom-hating reporters prove otherwise.</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Sign or make mark: _________________________</span>Brandohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10484284471046027179noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12562069.post-1116899408305814422015-09-15T20:46:00.000-05:002015-11-11T16:37:59.377-06:00Spot the persecution<i>Best of Circle Jerk at the Square Dance.<br />Originally published May 23, 2005</i><br /><br /><br /><br />Many Christians are complaining about being persecuted for their religious beliefs. Are you? Take this handy quiz to find out.<br /><br />For each of the following, select the answer that is NOT an example of religious persecution.<br /><br />1. Because of our religious beliefs or identity, we have been<br />a) sent to the gas chambers<br />b) nailed to a cross<br />c) stoned to death<br />d) voted into office<br /><br />2. When others found out about our religious persuasion, they<br />a) threw us in jail<br />b) threw us to the lions<br />c) threw us into slavery<br />d) threw us a nice tax break<br /><br />3. In order to worship freely, have been forced to<br />a) leave our homeland<br />b) fight long, bloody wars<br />c) spend centuries crusading for our rights<br />d) find a parking spot<br /><br />4. To inflict pain on us, our enemies have<br />a) burned us at the stake<br />b) stretched us on the rack<br />c) dunked us underwater<br />d) criticized us in an op-ed<br /><br />5. When we have tried to pray, we have<br />a) had our tongues cut out<br />b) had our hands cut off<br />c) had our kneecaps broken<br />d) been asked to do so quietly so as not to disrupt class<br /><br />6. Our churches have been<br />a) burned down<br />b) blown up<br />c) boarded up<br />d) given generous zoning permits<br /><br />7. Our women and children are<br />a) being murdered by soldiers<br />b) being driven from their homes<br />c) being denied food and water<br />d) going back for seconds at the church picnic<br /><br /><br />8. In our government, we have<br />a) no representation<br />b) no legal recourse<br />c) no right to defend ourselves<br />d) no problem getting laws passed because we control the legislature<br /><br />9) To support our faith, we are forced to<br />a) pass coded messages<br />b) meet in secret<br />c) expose ourselves to physical retribution<br />d) pass a basket around every Sunday<br /><br />10) When we criticize the perceived decadence of society, we are<br />a) beaten<br />b) blackballed<br />c) censored<br />d) asked to host our own show on Fox News<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Scoring</span><br />If you answered <span style="font-style: italic;">a</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">b</span>, or <span style="font-style: italic;">c</span> to any of these questions, you have been seriously persecuted for your religious beliefs. You may even be a candidate for sainthood/martyrdom/a commemorative stamp.<br /><br />If you answered <span style="font-style: italic;">d</span> to all the questions, congratulations! You are able to practice your religion freely. But if you still feel your are being persecuted for your beliefs, please call 1-800-WHIN-ERS. A counselor will be on hand to help you pull your head out of your ass.Brandohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10484284471046027179noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12562069.post-52022805482320162282015-09-01T09:11:00.000-05:002015-11-11T16:43:37.785-06:00Ten Simple Rules for Graduate Students in the Evil Sciences<i>Best of Circle Jerk at the Square Dance.<br />Originally published February 14, 2008</i><br /><br /><br /><b>Rule 1: Have a passion for evil</b>So many pursue evil science for the superficial reasons: power, wealth, and infamy. But while those rewards are ignoble, to be a successful evil scientist, you have to follow your heart and find true heartlessness. Most evil graduate programs are in lonely, isolated places—old castles, uncharted islands, under water. Those near populated areas tend to attract the scorn of the local citizens and the attention of authorities. Even the most evil of graduate students can’t help but feel a little bit alone and alienated. A true passion for evil will carry you through those rough spots until you can turn the tables on those all those bastards who said you were mad.<br /><br /><br /><b>Rule 2: Select the right evil mentor, project, and laboratory</b><br />Finding the right evil mentor can be difficult, as they may be in hiding or incarcerated. Furthermore, nearly all evil scientists are selfish and untrustworthy, which tends to undermine the mentoring process. Ask around to see if the one you wish to work with will foster the positive learning environment you need to promote evil. Talk to henchmen, thugs, security forces, submarine crews, and even former damsels in distress.<br /><br />The nature of the project is equally important. What is incredibly evil today can be laughably harmless tomorrow. Avoid selecting trendy research areas, such as Martian sciences and journeys to the center of the earth, which can become dated very quickly. Also, consider whether your project will even seem evil. A <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nude_Bomb">nude bomb</a> or <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orgasmatron">orgasmatron</a>, while extremely evil to some voter demographics, may actually be embraced by others.<br /><br />Finally, the laboratory should match your research interests. For instance, those interested in re-animation should look for dust, cobwebs, and Van der Graaf generators. Researchers in evil androids will want laboratories that look futuristic and, if possible, are made of white plastic. And doomsday graduate students will want to work as far away from their geographic subject areas as possible.<br /><br /><br /><b>Rule 3: Independent, stubborn thinking is the stock trait of a true evil scientist </b><br />A scientist who solicits the opinions of others, listens carefully to their suggestions, and acts on the recommendations wouldn’t seem very evil. Always ignore the advice of even your closest comrades, particularly when they offer sound suggestions like killing a nemesis quickly and verifying his or her death.<br /><br /><br /><b>Rule 4: Balance your evil life </b><br />There’s an old saying that an evil scientist who always works is truly mad. Take time away from the lab to balance out your villainy. Hunt humans for sport, open a mink farm, or work with your local city council to bring a Wal-Mart to your town. It’s all about balance.<br /><br /><br /><b>Rule 5: Think ahead and develop your evil career early </b><br />To be an evil scientist, you have to let everyone know, early on, that you are a force to be feared and reviled. Work on your evil laugh, develop presentations that clearly express your deviousness, and demand sums of money that will be both shocking yet not inconceivable. Consider learning the audio-video skills needed to hijack broadcasting equipment to beam your message to every man, woman, and child, or look to outsource this work to a certified evil contractor such as a cable company.<br /><br />You also need to think about what you plan to do with your evil research, if that field is lucrative, and if your current studies will fulfill those requirements. For instance, a career in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bond_villains">Bond Villainy</a> offers unending job possibilities, but also requires a multidisciplinary approach. Don’t wait to develop those skills until after you complete your studies, because by that time you will probably be wanted by the authorities.<br /><br /><br /><b>Rule 6: Always reevaluate your work for its evilness </b><br />This may seem simple, but what is considered evil can change over time. A horrifying <i>Brave New World</i> can become an enticing brave new biotech investment option on the Nasdaq. Make sure what you’re doing inspires horror, not IPOs.<br /><br /><br /><b>Rule 7: Find flaws in your research before the good guys show up </b><br />There is nothing worse than trapping your nemesis, cackling maniacally, and pressing a big red button, only to have nothing happen. Test your evil science constantly. Railroad yards, communes, and office cubicles provide endless sources of human subjects who won’t be missed and will probably go without a fight.<br /><br /><br /><b>Rule 8: Share your evil genius with the world </b><br />No man is an island, and likewise <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Island_of_Dr._Moreau">no evil scientist should keep his hellish army of man-beasts on an island</a>. Keeping your evil work to yourself is a crime.<br /><br /><br /><b>Rule 9: Kill anyone who points out flaws in your research </b><br />While Rule 7 shows the importance of finding flaws in your research, it’s important that everyone a) knows that you are in charge and b) knows you are inherently evil. The sooner you demonstrate this, the better. The first time someone corrects or questions your work, it is vital that you kill them immediately in order to promote the productivity and focus of those in your lab.<br /><br /><br /><b>Rule 10: Demonstrate your readiness for graduation by destroying your mentor with your work</b><br />Once all your research is completed, your critics dead, and your subjects killed or hideously mutated, you are ready to graduate. Gather your mentor and anyone else involved with your work and unleash your research on them. If they are also killed or hideously mutated, congratulations, you now have your Ph.D. in evil science!<br /><br />But remember: be wary of evil doctorate students asking you to mentor them.Brandohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10484284471046027179noreply@blogger.com22tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12562069.post-88329782155827920422013-03-15T14:53:00.000-05:002013-03-15T14:53:26.719-05:00Not to be a total bummer on a Friday...but this is one hell of a video, and a hauntingly beautiful song.<br /><br /><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="225" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/n8sLcvWG1M4" width="400"></iframe> <br />Sadly, no time for 10 more songs, just too damn busy, although that is not necessarily a sad situation. Have a good weekend. Brandohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10484284471046027179noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12562069.post-69798104361508260722013-03-01T17:37:00.000-06:002013-03-01T17:37:19.643-06:00Friday Random 11<i>It’s one more random than 10!&nbsp;</i><br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/ZrhVKwDJIGg" target="_blank">1) “These Are the Fables,” The New Pornographers</a></b>. I made up a story for Libby at bedtime the other night. I don’t usually do that, sticking instead with reading books to her. But she said she wanted to hear a story about me as a little boy, only she wanted it to be about me fighting a dragon (for real, not with my mind and a 20-sided die). So I created a story where my siblings and I had to slay a dragon who was raiding our village (total <i>Dragonslayer</i> cribbing), helped along by a wizard named Gandalf who gave us some magic weapons. It’s amazing how creative you can be when you have free reign to plagiarize.<br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/-xWswbDPCj8" target="_blank">2) “Sunny,” Morrissey.</a></b> I wonder if he sounds sad when he orders carry out (er, take away). Does he say stuff like, <i>Oh, how long for a pizza pie, one that reminds me of your eyes, if they were made of, pepperooooooni</i>.<br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/zKUkRgzCL44" target="_blank">3) “Unglued,” Stone Temple Pilots</a></b>. Most annoying junkie in rock history? Seriously, Jimi Hendrix dies after three solo albums, but Scott Weiland has survived long enough to get kicked out of Stone Temple Pilots twice? That just isn’t fair.<br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/gproa6vzgws" target="_blank">4) “Kiss Off,” Violent Femmes</a></b>. I am no comedy wallflower, as you all are well aware. However, I damn near dropped my phone when I saw the infamous <i>Onion</i> Oscar tweet. However, the worst part to me was the endless MANSPLAINING that it was a joke and not directed at Quvenzhané Wallis, as if <i>The Onion</i> is some kind of Iranian nuclear schematic that’s difficult to understand instead of one of the lower hanging fruits on the comedy tree. They also tried to act like intent is all that matters in comedy, which I guess means white people can call black people the n-word as long as they don’t mean it. Imagine sitting at a dinner table with your father and, after your mother left the room, you said, “Boy, mom’s really a cunt, isn’t she?” Granted, this may elicit the occasional grunt of alcoholic agreement, especially if your last name is Lockhorn. In most cases, though, I doubt the intent would convince your father not to punch you and/or write you out of the will. Just remember: if you’re unsure whether you should call a nine-year-old girl a cunt to get a laugh, you’re much better off checking the “No” box.<br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/nWdUuVQqA6c" target="_blank">5) “Oliver James,” Fleet Foxes</a></b>. If I was named Oliver James, I would have this played at my funeral. But I’m not, so I’m going to go with my <a href="http://youtu.be/JG2IFsz_n5c" target="_blank">second choice</a>.<br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/uY1ahFCYT5k" target="_blank">6) “Cath…,” Death Cab for Cutie</a></b>. This song always reminds me of a young woman getting hit on by an much older (and creepier) man, and in the wake of the Oscars, that can’t help but remind me a little of <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/entertainment/2013/02/jennifer-lawrences-oscars-interview-interrupted-by-jack-nicholson/" target="_blank">Jennifer Lawrence meeting Jack Nicholson</a>. I also had my own old man moment (non-creepy), where I found myself thinking <i>that Jennifer Lawrence is adorable</i>, the way you would talk about a puppy or the grandchild you secretly favor over the other also-rans. Not <i>Jennifer Lawrence is hot</i> or even the gentlemanly <i>Jennifer Lawrence is rather attractive</i>. I am happy I had the adorable thought, because I am old enough to be her father if I a) had made some different life choices and b) were fertile. At the same time, it was like having a platonic hug with mortality that I was too old to have anything remotely resembling a dirty thought about her.<br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/LGD9i718kBU" target="_blank">7) “Love My Way,” The Psychedelic Furs</a></b>. This is a much more age-appropriate love.<br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/djVGhqvl_8A" target="_blank">8) “Red Barchetta,” Rush</a></b>. I will spare the usually orgasmic prose about THE GREATEST BAND IN THIS OR ANY UNIVERSE and instead mention something silly that made me feel kind of awesome. I was at wholesale retailer that rhymes with LostMoe with my daughter. They had an 80-inch television on display, which elicited a sound of awe from my little girl that filled me with electronic pride. There was a salesmen who happened to be African American standing by the display. He wore a shirt from a company that rhymes with Erect TV. He asked me who my cable provider was, and when I responded that I was a happy customer of his employer, he smiled, said, “right on,” and offered me an unsolicited fist bump. As someone who is whiter than Wonder Bread, this filled me with a delightful mix of hipness and racial harmony. I felt like the two of us could have come up with a plan for ending racism by the end of the next minority-free episode of <i>Girls</i>. It is a testament to how uncool I feel most of the time that I had this reaction.<br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/i1334mXtgM8" target="_blank">9) “Part IV (The Index Fossil,” Bad Religion</a></b>. Dedicated to the #1 BR fan, <a href="http://reallysmallfish.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">fish</a>.<br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/6ZrKAR32WKU" target="_blank">10) “Milkman,” EMA</a></b>. One of those albums that is really, really good, but such a downer that I almost never play it.<br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/am6rArVPip8" target="_blank">11) “What the Water Gave Me,” Florence + the Machine</a></b>. In addition to my daughter appreciating epically sized televisions, she has started to really get into music and have opinions on music—especially her preference for “girl singers.” If she knows the song, she sings along, or at least mumbles in tune until the chorus shows up. She really likes anything by Florence, so whenever this pops up, I have Libby + the Machine joining in. I’ll take that, even if she will never, ever sing “Tom Sawyer.”<br /><br />Have a good weekend!Brandohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10484284471046027179noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12562069.post-59127935900611654262013-02-22T15:59:00.001-06:002013-02-22T16:00:18.660-06:00Friday Random 1+1<p>A little busy today, so I will leave you with some old Police:</p> <iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/2Fuh3Gt4ngM" width="420"></iframe> <p>and some new Ex-Cops:</p> <iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="237" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/HgRil7yidDg" width="420"></iframe> <p>Have a good weekend!</p>Brandohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10484284471046027179noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12562069.post-26792454238316518492013-02-19T21:28:00.002-06:002013-02-20T08:40:09.295-06:00Top Ten Tuesdays: What awards are we up for?<b>Special Extended Walkoff Music Edition!</b><br /><br />15) Best Supporting Role in a Threesome <br /><br />14) Angriest Bird <br /><br />13) Most Likely to Have a Drunk and Bitter Existence After Ruling Senior Year <br /><br />12) Best Bullet Point Narration in a Live Presentation or Webcast <br /><br />11) The High Times Hashiest Tag Award <br /><br />10) Best Brofist <br /><br />9)&nbsp;The First Annual Christopher Dorner Award for Most Misguided Attempt to Make a Point<br /><br />8) Best Performance by an Emoticon <br /><br />7) Most Desperate Attempt to Use Baby Pictures to Get Facebook Likes<br /><br /><div>6) Least Convincing Thanking of God in an Acceptance Speech<br /><br />5) <a href="http://www.acontrolledsubstance.com/2013/02/04/landslide-was-that-a-budweiser-ad-or-brokeback-mountain-from-the-horses-mouth/" target="_blank">Best Use of Bestiality to Boost Brand Awareness</a> <br /><br />4) Least Racist YouTube Comment <br /><br />3) Best Netflix Queue <br /><br />2) <a href="http://www.comedycentral.com/video-clips/v64ifb/chappelle-s-show-the-playa-hater-s-ball" target="_blank">Most Valuable Player Hater</a> <br /><br />1) Best Awards Categories</div>Brandohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10484284471046027179noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12562069.post-16431753028864558492013-02-15T17:06:00.001-06:002013-02-15T17:18:15.340-06:00Friday Random 11<i>It’s one more random than 10!&nbsp;</i><br /><br />OMG, WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!!!!<br /><div><br /></div><div>Sorry, that was what ran through my head when I saw the footage of the meteor that hit Russia. I think comets have been called the Finger of God, but this fucking thing looked like the middle finger of Cthulu. I half expected to see giant walkers emerging and incinerating everyone in sight save for Tom Cruise (thanks for adding insult to injury, assholes).<br /><br />However, because this happened in Russia, a place with #realproblems rather than #whitepeopleproblems, the populace seemed to react much more calmly than we would have. <a href="http://gawker.com/5984470/apparent-meteorite-crash-in-russia-causes-giant-explosions-forces-evacuation-of-nearby-offices-and-schools" target="_blank">The first video Gawker posted </a>showed a guy driving along when the sky EXPLODES, and he’s all <i>meeti ori bork bork!</i> or whatever he was saying in his Ruskie Fuskie language. Maybe that’s one of the side effects of having your cranial fluid be 97% Stoli. Or maybe, being Russian, he’s not going to get terribly agitated unless he sees a column of advancing Panzers, agricultural collectivization, or an unattended pallet of blue jeans. Because if this happened in, say, Los Angeles, I’m pretty sure the LAPD would have immediately started shooting minorities on the off chance they had become irradiated space zombies.<br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/s5847M3MF1g" target="_blank">1) “Backwater,” Meat Puppets</a></b>. God apparently hates Siberia almost as much as dinosaurs and uppity archangels who think they know everything. I’m surprised Republicans didn’t issue a press release declaring this a divine endorsement of America.<br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/fUO7N-zSMYc" target="_blank">2) “The Long and Winding Road,” The Beatles</a></b>. My least favorite Beatles song of the “good” Beatles songs. I feel like this should play at the end of a Bond movie where he drops flowers on the graves of his nemesis Dr. I.M. DeBagge and the sultry femme fatale Gina Spott at the end of <i>Silent But Deadly</i>, before turning and walking away with the bikini-clad German double-agent Uma Schtupewe to cash in the chips he won playing baccarat by the pool.<br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/KKuTIyreEnY" target="_blank">3) “Metropolis,” The Church</a></b>. The best one-liner I saw regarding the Pope stepping down was a caption that read, “Pulls out early, like a good Catholic.” Seriously, how sad was it to be funny before the Internet. Imagine at the beginning of the Depression, you take a picture of the president and put the caption, “Nothing sucks like a Hoover,” and all you could do was share it with the other hobos in the boxcar. Sad. Also, you wouldn't be able to find the hard-to-find MTV<i>&nbsp;Unplugged</i>&nbsp;version of this song within two clicks of your fingers.<br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/LUqMRkwxkso" target="_blank">4) “Starrider,” Foreigner</a></b>. You know you’re in for a big fat bag of musical suck within three notes. It gets even worse when the goddammed harpsichord emerges out of nowhere like a flare up of classical herpes. There would be less progressive cheese if you made figurines of every single member of Yes out of blocks of Velveta.<br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/QXeonAidPlg" target="_blank">5) “Foreplay/Long Time,” Boston</a></b>. The space intro perfectly conveys the cosmic splendor that is <a href="http://yerevanmagazine.com/the-first-armenian-rock-legend/" target="_blank">Sib Hashian’s hair</a>, before <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:TomScholz.JPG" target="_blank">Tom Scholz’s mullet</a> warps in from the nexus of all party and serious business and sets his guitar phasers to “facemelt.”<br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/NHa1ThS9avA" target="_blank">6) “Acrobat,” U2</a></b>. Libby is taking gymnastics, and God help her, she’s already taller than Mary Lou Reton. We just had to retire her size six clothes because she’s too tall for them, and she won’t turn five until June. The good news is that she’s also taking tae kwan do, and she’s got reach on the other kids in her class. When she sweeps a leg, it’s going to stay swept.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div><b><a href="http://youtu.be/Pphrk6wE5aw" target="_blank">7) “The Sound of Settling,” Death Cab for Cutie</a></b>. Now that we are squarely in the era of divorce in our lives, any marriage dissolution among friends and acquaintances tends to trigger a discussion of how much it would suck if we found ourselves “back out there.” We would be especially screwed because we got married around the age of 12 (approximately), so neither of us has any clue what you do on a grown-up date. I could probably handle dinner okay, assuming my date likes dick jokes (I’d pre-screen on OK Cupid), but then I’d be like “So, how does a movie and some under-the-bra action sound? Wait, where are you going? Does this mean I can eat your dessert?” A house cat parachuting into the African&nbsp;savanna&nbsp;would have a better chance of survival than I would.<br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/Z1LXLIcx354" target="_blank">8) “Out of the Silent Planet,” King’s X</a></b>. I want to get out the part about King's X being a seriously underrated band with a special shout out for finding a perfect guitar sound between clean and crunchy, and take a moment to express a real white people problem: iTunes 11 is awful. This is a dumb thing to rant about, but given that I work at home and I have music on probably 75% of the time I’m working, I use iTunes all the time. One thing I always loved while doing the Random 11 was setting iTunes to cover view, because the album covers would flip like you were looking at a real album collection instead of collection of JPEGs in varying degrees of pixilation. Yes, I am easily amused. Well, not only did that go away, but my library doesn’t even follow the shuffle now, only the tiny little status bar shows what’s being played. Maybe there’s a way to change it, but the M.C. Escher-designed menus all lead to a button that says "Suck it" in an admittedly glamorous sans serif font. Even the side scrolling bar doesn’t show up when you open iTunes, you have to minimize it, then maximize it, something that confused me for hours until I used the Internet to find the solution. (Disclaimer: I’m Polish and will swear my undying fealty if you can change a lightbulb.) Then I get mad at myself for getting mad over such stupid stuff when there are real problems like DEADLY METEORITES HEADING RIGHT TOWARD US, but then I see ABBA being displayed when Warren Zevon is playing and the cycle of rage begins anew. I will not last long when civilization collapses.<br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/YBMEFxEhu_8" target="_blank">9) “A Legal Matter,” The Who</a></b>. The amount of casual chauvinism in some of the music I like is disconcerting. I mean, if I’m queuing up some <a href="http://youtu.be/XZHVkJ1wVFM" target="_blank">Winger</a>, I know that the chorus I’m singing is at least one year removed from legally acceptable if still morally questionable attitudes toward women. You know what to expect from a guy named Kip. But then I’ll hear something like this from a paragon of rock godliness, a jaunty FU to an ex-wife and it’s little jarring. It was worse the other day when I heard Rod Stewart’s “<a href="http://youtu.be/uOfnNYhgFKQ" target="_blank">Stay With Me</a>,” which features an irresistible bit of dirty guitar boogie coupled with lyrics about him using an unattractive woman for sex due to a lack of any other serviceable option. So I guess the question is, as long as I know better, it’s still okay for me to sing, right? What if I do the dishes without being prompted?<br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/JtpFOBJA7O8" target="_blank">10) “309,” Russian Circles</a></b>. Ha, have to hand it to iTunes, it has a great sense of humor. Another thing about the meteor crash: could you imagine the conspiracy theories in this country if it happened here? It would be an alien vessel, a fallen angel, a test of a new UN Gay Ray that turns everyone homosexual so that humans die out and the trees win, God’s rebuttal to the State of the Union, a new marketing campaign to drum up purchases at Sunglasses Hut…anything but a meteor. And if we had advance notice, how many Americans would be on their lawns shooting at it? Because the only thing that can stop bad gravity with a giant space rock is a good guy with a gun.<br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/BiyCkSOF1pc" target="_blank">11) “Wild Horses,” The Sundays</a></b>. TLB made her famous “horse show” cookies, which are like chocolate chip cookies mixed with orgasm. They are huge and probably have enough calories per cookie to induce a heart attack if saw that number. She made some for her class and left “a few” for us. “A few” in the house with the man who is home all day and has no visible coworkers to shoulder some of the cookie consumption or at least threaten to brand him with a scarlet C on his chest if he was found in the supply room covered in cookie crumbs and shame. I ate four yesterday, and that was with me exercising John The Baptist levels of dietary restraint. We could just bake a batch for the CIA to use during interrogations and we would know every Al Qaeda plan by the second bite.<br /><br />Have a great weekend! </div>Brandohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10484284471046027179noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12562069.post-78776340754993083342013-02-13T12:19:00.003-06:002013-02-13T13:25:53.421-06:00Marco Rubio Interrupts State of the Union Rebuttal for a Trip to the Bathroom <b>Florida Senator calls for less government, more air freshener&nbsp;</b><br /><br />BIZZAROWORLD, USA – During the middle of a prewritten Republican rebuttal to President Obama’s state of the union address, Florida Senator Marco Rubio made an unexpected detour when he excused himself to use the bathroom. <br /><br />After discussing the need to cut taxes, improve Medicare, and enact a number of other budgetary and social welfare policies that are completely at odds with each other, Senator Rubio stated, “In the short time I’ve been in Washington, I’ve been frustrated by…by….uh oh,” as he held his right hand over his lower torso. He then uttered under his breath, “Chipotle before my big speech. What was I thinking? <i>Stupid, stupid</i>!” He took a deep breath, spun on one heel, and retreated to the bathroom. <br /><br />When the cameras remained focused on the empty space where the senator was supposed to be, he called for them to follow and “continue the dialog.” The crew followed him to the lavatory door, which Rubio had left wide open as he prepared to use the facilities. A quick reaction from a key grip to close the door saved the situation from becoming a national trauma. <br /><br />“Where was I? Oh yeah, frustrated,” Rubio continued. “It has been….<i>difficult</i>…to deal with the…<i>gridlock</i>…that the president and….<i>Democrats</i>….have used to block the…the…oh, God…<i>passage</i>….of key reforms….whew.” Rubio then laid out five key strategies for successful bipartisan action on America’s most pressing issues, all of which were inaudible due to the sound of him washing his hands and the toilet flushing twice. <br /><br />At that point, Senator Rubio emerged, <a href="http://gawker.com/5983926/heres-a-supercut-of-all-the-dry-mouth-noises-marco-rubio-made-during-last-nights-response" target="_blank">took a sip of water</a>, and closed his address by saying, “Thank you for listening. May God bless all of you, may God bless our president, and may God continue to bless America, especially with ample supplies of Charmin and Pepto-Bismal.” <br /><br />After a moment of silence, he said to the crew, “Wow, I just put the <i>butt</i> in <i>rebuttal</i>, boys. Seriously, don’t go in there if you value your eyebrows. Hey, why is that light on the camera still red?”Brandohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10484284471046027179noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12562069.post-53122817347814297012013-02-12T15:37:00.000-06:002013-02-12T15:37:31.633-06:00Top Ten Tuesdays: Why are we leaving the papacy?<div><b>Special extended homily edition!</b></div><div><br /></div>15) <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/11/pope-complicit-child-abuse-say-victims" target="_blank">Feeling more Pontius than papal</a>.<br /><br />14) Working full time on bath soap line, Pope-on-a-Rope. <br /><br />13) Starting a new international language club, The Latin Kings. <br /><br />12) Can’t stomach another month of Filet O’ Fish on Lenten Fridays. <br /><br />11) After a lifetime of working on canons, want to hit the gym to work on our guns. <br /><br />10) Finally celebrating Fat Tuesday the way God intended: showing our tits for Rosary beads. <br /><br />9) Tired of people making infallible jokes when our NCAA bracket goes bust. <br /><br />8) Starting new death metal band, The Cardinal Sins. <br /><br />7) The frock and funny hat make it really hard to pick up women. <br /><br />6) Becoming an image consultant for the Republican party. <br /><br />5) Feel the Catholic Church needs the strength and energy that can only be provided by a 75-year-old Pope. <br /><br />4) Lawyers won’t automatically know where we live. <br /><br />3) Drinking six&nbsp;chalices&nbsp;of &nbsp;the "Blood of Christ" every day is turning our liver into water.<br /><br />2) Want to be able to end our papal life with dignity and on our terms, before we become a shell of our former selves. <br /><br />1) <a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-pope-global-church-20130212,0,6798505.story" target="_blank">Natural instinct for a Ratso to be the first one off a sinking ship.</a>Brandohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10484284471046027179noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12562069.post-22430343992663141722013-02-08T17:10:00.000-06:002013-02-08T17:10:05.250-06:00Friday Random 11<i>It’s one more random than 10!</i><br /><br />No time for love, Dr. Jones! Just tunes.<br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/eNot47WRBFk" target="_blank">1) “Train in Vain,” The Clash</a></b>. I read <a href="http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/8914197/the-winners-history-rock-roll-part-5-metallica" target="_blank">a piece on Grantland about Metallica</a> that had a much more interesting subsection on the splintering of rock music. It talked about the divide between elitist taste and mainstream taste, and there’s a tidbit about how, in 1981, CBS Records own president wanted to push The Clash’s <i>Sandinista!</i>, while the PR guys were pushing REO Speedwagon’s <i>Hi Infidelity</i>. Well, it was no contest who won—the public’s going to go for stories about cautionary tales of hearing third-hand gossip from one’s so-called friends over funky six-minute songs about cops kicking gypsies on the pavement. However, as someone who likes both The Clash and REO Speedwagon, I felt like a child caught in a musical custody battle. Here was the productive, admirable parent, the one making me do my homework but also making me a better person. And then there’s fun parent, who loves ripping off guitar solos almost as much as donuts in the parking lot. However, we all agreed that Uncle Metallica had devolved into a bitter asshole.<br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/__QUo-UsWvM" target="_blank">2) “Pacific Theme,” Broken Social Scene</a></b>. I would have given a lot to be near anything Pacific yesterday, as I shoveled not only snow, but the water from the rain that fell before changing into snow and then getting covered like a Burmese tiger trap for my lower back muscles. Then again, I’ll take Midwestern weather over living amid <a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-dorner-profile-20130207,0,3013535.story" target="_blank">rampaging ex-LAPD members</a> who sound like the love child of The Punisher and Ted Kaczynski.<br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/l9jX1KAKp78" target="_blank">3) “Love, Hate, Love,” Alice in Chains</a></b>. Seriously, have you read <a href="http://documents.latimes.com/christopher-dorner-manifesto/" target="_blank">Psycho Cop’s manifesto</a>? It’s disturbing because 95% of it is normal. At least with a Kaczynski or Manson, you know within three sentences/30 seconds that you’ve just sailed into Cape Crazy. <i>Oh, The White Album is really about inciting a race war in America? Say, let’s get you a straight jacket. You look about a 40 Slim</i>. But Psycho Cop starts out with an airing of grievances that’s cogent, lucid, and more polite than any YouTube thread. Except that, after rationally laying out his arguments, he decides the best solution is to murder those who wronged him and maybe their families. It’s done so casually that it’s way more jarring than any Zodiac code. He repeats this approach a few times, especially, after making great points about need for gun control, he says he’s going to illustrate his argument by killing people with his legally purchased guns. But the REALLY crazy part is when he spends a half dozen pages at the end thanking random public figures and celebrities, including this doozy:<br /><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">It's kind of sad I won’t be around to view and enjoy The Hangover Ill. What an awesome trilogy. Todd Phillips, don't make anymore hangovers after the third, takes away the originality of its foundation.&nbsp;</blockquote>That’s A) nuts to include after rambling about using asymmetrical warfare against the police and B) clearly the sign of a disturbed mind if you want to see another <i>Hangover</i> movie after the abortion that was the second. Anyway, in seriousness, it’s fucking frightening and sad that this guy already killed people and that the cops shot up a truck with two women in it. It’s bad when <i>L.A. Confidential</i> seems like a more flattering portrait of the LAPD.<br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/Z3tWXQbTpbM" target="_blank">4) “I’m Always in Love,” Wilco</a></b>. There’s a great old-school synthesizer that really makes this song (and sadly a little buried on the version on YouTube). It’s funny how, in the context of a Jeff Tweedy pop gem, that synthesizer sounds warm and female-friendly, whereas when it’s used <a href="http://youtu.be/SEuOoMprDqg" target="_blank">to punctuate an immortal man trapped in caves of ice</a>, it’s an airhorn that chases 99 out of 100 vaginas away. Unrelated: I would love to have an old school synth sound be the horn on my car. I would just lay on it traffic and make people think they were stuck in front of ELP's tourbus.<br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/AKdTNUBO3fc" target="_blank">5) “Electric Fever,” Free Energy</a></b>. Libby has started ice skating, and we had the discussion about how I ice skated a few times when I was a kid. I explained that it wasn’t that hard because I roller skated a lot, and that led to further explanation that I and my friends would sometimes gather for a party and go in circles around an oval on shoes with wheels attached. For the first time in 30 years, I had the desire to slap on some skates and spend the evening listening to 70s rock while trying to get the courage to ask Mary Lou Chestblossom if I could hold her hand while we went round in circles. Anyway, this song would not sound at all out of place on a night like that.<br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/GkoGX-sFDt8" target="_blank">6) “Sierra Leone,” Frank Ocean.</a></b> I’m surprised that I liked this album as much as I did, because I do not have much hop in my hip. But there’s a death metal parallel that explains it. I loves me some metal, but a lot of speedyblackdeath metal doesn’t appeal to me because the singers sound like they replaced their vocal chords with a garbage disposal. Yet the exact same song with clean-sounding vocals wins me over almost every time. Frank Ocean does the same for me. The arrangements are very hip-hop and R&amp;B, but because he’s got such a great voice, I’m totally won over. I hope he cleans up at the Grammys.<br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/RBJUHvQPFTI" target="_blank">7) “Stepping Out,” Joe Jackson</a></b>. The Lovely Becky and I see about 1-2 non-animated moves in the movie theater per year. Last weekend, we finally arranged to see<i> Zero Dark Thirty</i>, with one of our lovely friends no less. A real grown-up evening, with unflinching depictions of torture and everything! Even a serious wrenching of TLB’s back a couple days before didn’t stop our quest for mature entertainment that didn’t involve talking chipmunks. In fact, TLB had some leftover Hillbilly Heroin from an earlier malady, so she popped those to get her back into a non-stress position. Well, after dinner and about 40 minutes into the movie, she began to feel an insurgency in her stomach and excused herself. A few minutes later, we got the text that it was time to accelerate our timetable for withdrawal. I don’t think you could have found a pair of parents who more closely resembled dejected four-year olds. Robbed! Plus I have no idea how the movie ended? Did they find the guy they were looking for?<br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/l9-NOIalUYU" target="_blank">8) “When You Sleep,” My Bloody Valentine</a></b>. One of my New Year’s resolutions was to get more sleep. I honestly am so much in the Do As I Say, Not As I Do parent camp, especially regarding sleep. Libby is at the age where she often fights or tries to cajole her way out of going to bed. She’ll get up for the third time and, just as my patience is about to end, tells me that the reason she got up was to tell me she loves me. (My heart melts, and I instantly hand her a sixer of Jolt Cola and initiate a Chipmunk movie marathon.) Yet I, the adult, fight going to bed so much, I had to make a specific resolution to go the fuck to sleep. A month in, I think I’ve gone to bed before midnight once or twice, and those were only after collapsing like a broken CIA detainee. I wake up tired and convinced that tonight’s going to be the night for that reasonable 11 pm bedtime, and 60 minutes past that, I’m saving the galaxy, liking status updates, or just flipping two birds at the clock because I’m all growns up and can do whatever I want. I am an idiot. Unrelated tangent: With a new My Bloody Valentine album released after 20+ years, I would not have wanted to be the one cleaning the men's bathroom at the Pitchfork offices this week.<br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/2vItfNWychQ" target="_blank">9) “Handsome Devil,” The Smiths</a></b>. Like a zillion other people, I also resolved to lose some weight this year. Fatherhood has not only made me soft and weak, but my Dagwood Bumstead eating habits have me on medications to dilute the ranch dressing flowing through my arteries. One element of that is to be on a beef ban—I have cut out red meat (<i>MY PRECIOUS!</i>) from my diet quite a bit, saving it only for a couple times a month, tops. I had one of those occasions at TLB’s parents’ house. We had a big family dinner with steaks as the main course. I didn’t want to be rude, so I made an exception. One of the steaks was done very rare, just brown on the top and bottom and the color of murder in the middle. I picked that one, because I wanted to experience every bloody, beefy bit of flavor. My mother-in-law saw it and offered to zap it in the microwave, and I nearly stabbed her with my knife. I wasn’t about to irradiate even one parcel of Beef County in Flavor Country with some dirty bomb cooking. The best was TLB sitting next to me in horror as I savored every bite. It was so sinfully good, I felt like my mouth was committing adultery.<br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/NDziQeU1mQ8" target="_blank">10) “All Day,” Ministry</a></b>. The old Eurotrash Ministry, back when they would let their songs be used in beer commercials (Old Style, if I remember correctly). Okay, a beef related-tangent: TLB and I were watching <i>Cougar Town</i> (hilarious show), and one of the storylines had a character dishing out hamburgers from a truck stand along with insults to the customers. She became known as the “Burger Bitch.” I immediately had the idea to start a chain called Roast Beef where customers get comedy roasted by the cashiers while placing their orders. Someone would come in and order a double burger, and the cashier would say something like, <i>This will be the most beef you’ve had in your mouth since Fleet Week</i>. If I had the money, I would have immediately drawn up the business plan and started constructing the first of what would be a nationwide fleet of insult food joints. So it’s a good thing I don’t have that money.<br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/QFtywrOTnHw" target="_blank">11) “I Believe in a Thing Called Love,” The Darkness</a></b>. Yes! Fire! The first time I heard this, I was surprised at how the singer could hit those crazy falsetto notes. Then I saw how tight his spandex body suit was and I wished I had only heard the record. The Post Traumatic Spandex Disorder has passed, though, so I can once again enjoy this puff pastry of rock ridiculousness.<br /><br />Have a good weekend!Brandohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10484284471046027179noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12562069.post-57010790132664449632013-02-05T23:54:00.000-06:002013-02-05T23:55:22.071-06:00Top Ten Tuesdays: What are we going to do now that football is over?13) Find out what happened to the wife and kids five months ago.<br /><br />12) Check Mel Kiper’s Twitter feed every minute for the next 115,200 minutes until the NFL Draft. <br /><br />11) Try not to get murdered by a very bored Ray Lewis. <br /><br />10) Clean off the Fathead. <br /><br />9) Use power of Tim Tebow jersey to change Gatorade into Coors Light. <br /><br />8) Submit proposal to improve NBA by allowing players to wear helmets and tackle each other. <br /><br />7) Have blood transfusion to remove mass quantities of dip from arteries. <br /><br />6) Tattoo our career stats on our arm so we can remember what we did with our lives after we’ve become drooling, concussed vegetables. <br /><br />5) Start a fantasy league for alcoholic beverages. <br /><br />4) Throw red challenge flag to overturn custody ruling. <br /><br />3) Hockey, I guess. <br /><br />2) Go back to church so we can pray for our team’s chances next year. <br /><br />1) Whatever Lord Goodell demands of us.Brandohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10484284471046027179noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12562069.post-26303987306328204402013-02-01T17:03:00.002-06:002013-02-01T17:03:47.292-06:00Friday Random 11<i>It’s one more random than 10!&nbsp;</i><br /><br />I apologize for anyone who is friends with me on The Facebook and saw this already, but I have to share an idea I had for the <i>30 Rock</i> finale:<br /><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">Tina Fey wakes up on the set of <i>Saturday Night Live</i> as Lorne Michaels shocks her back to consciousness with a cattle prod and tells her to get back to work. Alec Baldwin is guest starring and is rehearsing the voice for a CEO character he's playing in a sketch with Will Arnett, while Keenan Thompson is in costume as Tracy Morgan.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">She gets up to walk back down the hall, where she bumps into Jane Krakowski, who is playing a dim-witted singer and the wife of Dean Winters's structural engineer/private detective character in NBC's new country drama, "Nashville Bridges." She asks herself if it was all just a dream just as she runs into newly-hired SNL writer Judah Friedlander, who wears a hat that says "IT WAS A DREAM." The camera pans up toward the ceiling, where we see Lutz in the shadows, a Phantom of the Opera mask covering his face, as he says, "Or was it?" before taking a bite of a Blimpie sub.&nbsp;</blockquote><br />I am really going to miss that show. I will not spoil the finale, which was very good, except to say that there was a rant from Lutz that caused The Lovely Becky and I to pause the DVR and spend five minutes trying to stop laughing. I also enjoyed <a href="http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/8900291/30-rock-race-identity-politics" target="_blank">this good piece on race in 30 Rock that ran on Grantland.</a> The slapstick and rapid-fire silliness on <i>30 Rock</i> could make it easy to overlook the bite of some of the gags, but watching the show in reruns now, it’s easier to see just how cutting the punchlines could be. Oh, how I will miss things like <a href="http://youtu.be/aVZs0hRxdYQ" target="_blank">Alec Baldwin playing Thomas Jefferson as Tracy Morgan’s father </a>or Tina Fey’s youth flashbacks or anything involving Lutz.<br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/L5etcNNOCVk" target="_blank">1) “Communication Breakdown,” Led Zeppelin</a></b>. We had a power outage here a couple days ago, and every time the power goes out, I immediately think <i>What the fuck am I going to do now? </i>I can’t work. I can’t cook. Approximately 95 percent of my entertainment options are erased, 100 percent if it happens at night and I can’t read. And the stupid <i>Revolution</i> show that I watched for three bulimic <i>Hunger Games</i> episodes now makes me take stock of how well I could survive a world without power, which I would say would be seventeen minutes past sundown. My daughter is better equipped to deal with a power outage because at least she’d think it was neat instead of the beginning of a new age of feudalism. Luckily the power came back on after five minutes and I was safe again.<br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/FOKb6Y7E38A" target="_blank">2) “2 Late 4 Love,” Tesla</a></b>. I can forgive and even enjoy a lot of social media abbreviations and <a href="http://blog.3bulls.net/archives/1646" target="_blank">illiterate LOLCATtery</a>. In fact, TLB loves to give me a kthxbai on text messages just to annoy me. But I cannot trunk numbers substituted for words. It’s cat nails on a LOLboard, and even Prince doing it drives me nuts.<br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/jACrmwTsi08" target="_blank">3) “Foolin’,” Def Leppard</a></b>. iTunes has got the T-top open in the Firebird today. Goddamn I love every song on <i>Pyromania</i>, and this one in particular has it all: super thick drum fills, cowbell, an acoustic guitar that gives it a ballad-fake out before the rocking commences, and an apostrophe’d ‘g. Yes, I hate numerical word substitution, but I love to drop my ‘g’s, because that’s fuckin’ rock and roll.<br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/xAZXGjoQTzw" target="_blank">4) “Hemispheres,” Rush</a></b>. No other song makes it more difficult to be a Rush fan. This is eighteen minutes of the proggiest of the proggy, a story of Dionysius and Apollo fighting for control of mankind, with the debate moderated by a mortal who arrives via a black hole from a song on the previous Rush album. I have explained this to TLB on several occasions, and each time she stops what she’s doing and does a laughing facepalm while shaking her head in a fashion that says <i>I can’t believe I have sex with this</i>. I would love to have a competition where Rush fans play this for their significant others and then attempt to have sex before the song ends. I guarantee if it doesn’t happen during the first three minutes of “I: Prelude,” before Geddy sings, <i>When our weary world was young / The stuggle of the ancients first began / the gods of love and reason / sought to rule the fate of man, </i>it's over.&nbsp;In fact, by the time you reach the lines <i>The cities were abandoned / And the forests echoed song / They danced and lived as brothers / They knew love could not be wrong</i> during “III: Dionysius, Bringer of Love,” there’s a pretty good chance a woman will become instantly menopausal. <br /><br />And still I love every 20-sided minute of it. No other song puts me in touch with my inner geek the way this one does. I was ecstatic to find the album <a href="http://youtu.be/vk4tcYOsYo4" target="_blank">not only being discussed during the Rush documentary</a>, but also to discover additional footage about this discussion stuck in the extras, because prolonged exposure to <i>Hemispheres</i> can kill mere mortals who have not been properly conditioned to handle it. If they played this in concert, there is no doubt that Becky would be bailing me out of jail after I was arrested for rushing (ha!) the stage and hugging Geddy’s Taurus pedals. <br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/Cj8JrQ9w5jY" target="_blank">5) “Daft Punk Is Playing at My House,” LCD Soundsystem</a></b>. Okay, all systems returned to normal. Oxygen levels stabilizing after overinhaling of Geddium. Gauges slowly shifting from freaky to funky. Booties now shaking impulsively rather than shitting uncontrollably.<br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/ah8QWamNXWk" target="_blank">6) “Night,” Zola Jesus</a></b>. I love a good, freaky album cover, and I got <a href="http://www.buddyhead.com/2010/05/13/zola-jesus-stridulum-ep/" target="_blank">this EP</a> precisely because the woman on it (presumably Ms. Jesus) looks like she just tried to break up with the thing from Stephen King’s “<a href="http://youtu.be/5AbjTFWJwfY" target="_blank">The Raft</a>” and he responded by getting extra clingy. <i>My God, this relationship is so suffocating!</i><br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/ZVaIFdb979A" target="_blank">7) “Shine Like It Does,” INXS</a></b>. They just called it quits, but I don’t know how they could have kept it going after Michael Hutchence died. Sometimes a band can pull off the singer switch (AC/DC comes to mind), but usually they should just pack it in, especially with a band like INXS where the singer was the identity of the band. No disrespect to the other members, who wrote fine music, but INXS doesn’t grab you because of Kirk Pengilly’s multi-instrumental talents. If you get another singer, have the courtesy to change the name to something like CHIN-XS.<br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/4NYQxDwCnmA" target="_blank">8) “Amazing Journey/Sparks, (Live)” The Who</a></b>. Tuesday nights, TLB takes the Libster up to her parents’ to spend the night because my mother-in-law watches her on Wednesdays. I have been using those Tuesday nights to get out and work on my novel, which usually goes very well. However, it was colder than a Hemispheres coitus session last week, so I decided to stay home and write. I grabbed my laptop, sat on the couch, and threw <i>Live at Leeds</i> in the big stereo, getting the proper <a href="http://youtu.be/lRflGVcRxCI" target="_blank">Entwistling</a> I can only get when I’m home alone with the subwoofer cranked. I also decided to pour a glass of Scotch, because that’s what writers do, right? Well, halfway through The Who’s seminal show, I was grooving and air drumming more than typing, which I think had more to do with fueling up the rock-it ship than with being at home and enjoying the best rock show ever recorded. I will be returning to my regularly scheduled Starbucks-at-7PM writing.<br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/NNxhbdPx7Sc" target="_blank">9) “I Might,” Wilco</a></b>. One of the great 30 Rock lines is when Queen Latifah (as a Congresswoman) asks Alec Baldwin why NBC, “looks as diverse as a Wilco concert?” Hey now, I saw old and young white people of both genders at that show.<br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/8KVAX_l1HVw" target="_blank">10) “Heartbreaker,” Alabama Shakes</a></b>. I really like these guys, they play great, soulful rock with a ton of heart. But I always feel ten years older when I hear this album, as if I should be in <i>The Big Chill 2: #iStalgia</i> where we put our first-generation iPods on shuffle and reminisce about how we used to be able to check in for our flights at the gate and have affairs without somebody talking about it on Facebook.<br /><br /><a href="http://youtu.be/PMKFLHx2c-M" target="_blank"><b>11) “Search and Destroy,” Iggy and the Stooges</b></a>. This song makes me want to be in a Huey screaming over the treetops of a war zone. I don’t want to actually kill anyone, but maybe shoot them with a Gatling version of a T-shirt cannon. Tell me that wouldn’t win some hearts and minds, if a big ass Huey appeared over some mountaintop and rained down a hail of shirts that said "Osama Don’t Surf" and included a free two-month gold subscription to Xbox Live and 10% off a footlong Jihadistrami sandwich at Subway. We’d solve terrorism by next Tuesday. <br /><br />Have a good weekend, and here’s hoping Ray Lewis can play in a Super Bowl without killing someone.Brandohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10484284471046027179noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12562069.post-73149699250678766792013-01-30T12:41:00.000-06:002013-01-30T12:41:44.858-06:00Top Ten Tuesdays: What are we going to do about gun violence?<b>Special high capacity 12-gauge edition!&nbsp;</b><br /><br />12) Whoah, back off! You’re way to close to home! Don’t make me shoot you! <br /><br />11) Oh, it’s just you. Sorry about that. There’s a lot of crazies with guns out there, so you can’t be too careful about who you might have to shoot. Good thing these babies have <a href="http://youtu.be/9MnDvvBQSyE" target="_blank">safeties</a> or I’d have had another “<a href="http://smartgunlaws.org/gun-deaths-and-injuries-statistics/" target="_blank">accidental</a>” shooting on my hands. Plus <a href="http://youtu.be/-eREiQhBDIk" target="_blank">your trigger finger gets really slippery</a> when it’s covered in blood. <br /><br />10) Look, if we outlaw guns, only criminals will have them. It doesn't make any sense to ban something when you can’t effectively enforce that ban. <br /><br />9) <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/12/the-single-best-anti-gun-death-policy-ending-the-drug-war/266505/" target="_blank">Except drugs</a>, of course. And <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/07/14/navarrette.guns.border/index.html" target="_blank">national borders</a>. And <a href="http://www.criminaljusticedegreesguide.com/uncategorized/9-most-frequently-broken-laws.html" target="_blank">speeding</a>. And <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2011/04/map-has-your-state-banned-sodomy" target="_blank">sodomy</a>. And <a href="http://smallbusiness.aol.com/2010/06/16/survey-says-employees-like-working-from-home-stealing-office-s/" target="_blank">stealing office supplies</a>. <br /><br />8) It’s also why we should develop more law-abiding gun owners by <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/27/us/selling-a-new-generation-on-guns.html?pagewanted=all" target="_blank">giving kids firearms</a>. The sooner they start, the sooner they can start acting responsibly. <br /><br />7) Of course, this doesn't at all apply to drinking. Or driving. Or voting. Or military service. Or buying lottery tickets. Those things are too dangerous for kids, unlike firearms. <br /><br />6) Besides, look at countries that have a lot of gun ownership and don’t have gun violence. Like <a href="http://www.ibtimes.com/connecticut-shooting-how-canada-views-americas-school-massacre-gun-culture-949300" target="_blank">Canada</a>. They should be our models. <br /><br />5) Except for health care. Or social welfare. Or pronunciation. Or <a href="http://youtu.be/AKJf4T4U66I" target="_blank">milk containers</a>.<br /><br />4) Finally, it doesn't matter. The Second Amendment guarantees the right to bear arms. The Supreme Court has upheld that. And the Constitution and the Supreme Court are never wrong. <br /><br />3) Except about <a href="http://www.comedycentral.com/video-clips/jktbrs/chappelle-s-show-greatest-misses---haters-in-time" target="_blank">slavery</a>. And <a href="http://youtu.be/0D9mDHPY0RA" target="_blank">women's equality</a>. And <a href="http://youtu.be/QJpRSf4q-hI" target="_blank">drinking</a>. And maybe income taxes, ‘cause income taxes suck. AmIrite? <br /><br />2) Plus, guns don’t kill people. People kill people. Especially people with guns. Wait, that came out wrong. <br /><br />1) Hmm, looks like we’ve backed ourselves into a corner a bit here about solving gun violence. <a href="http://youtu.be/KJMxGFco57Y" target="_blank">I guess we’ll just a have to shoot our way out</a>. Brandohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10484284471046027179noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12562069.post-14174509272864787762013-01-18T21:19:00.004-06:002013-01-18T21:19:50.497-06:00Friday Random 11<i>It’s one more random than 11!&nbsp;</i><br /><br />God bless you, three-day weekend, especially for making said weekend occur on NFL Championship Weekend, the last set of games for actual football fans, before being surrounded by people double-dipping salsa while complaining about how long it takes to get to the commercials. I hope it will be <a href="http://youtu.be/cncSWC5OW50" target="_blank">Dreamboat Brady</a> against <a href="http://youtu.be/uzfTC1XW_yQ" target="_blank">Butt-Slappin’ Jim Harbaugh</a> and the San Francisco 49ers in the big game, both because I would love to see the Pats lose another Super Bowl and also see Bill Belichick <a href="http://youtu.be/Tf2dn3m7yPU" target="_blank">transform his hand into a blade that impales</a> Harbaugh when he shakes the Belichick’s other hand a little too vigorously. <br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/Naf5uJYGoiU" target="_blank">1) “Hey Ladies,” Beastie Boys</a></b>. One beauty of Facebook is that I get to crash threads started by my teenage cousins. One of them posted a message asking her friends for music recommendations for her school’s turnabout dance. One enterprising young lad stole my punchline—2 Live Crew’s “Hey We Want Some Pussy”—but I suggested this as an alternative. <br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/5oSz8Xip_ho" target="_blank">2) “Hammer to Fall,” Queen</a></b>. I had lunch with The Lovely Becky today at a neighborhood place with great cocktails, so I decided to have a drink during lunch, a delicious Maker’s Mark Old Fashioned. After we ate, the waitress brought a desert menu, which featured a section called “Unique Scotches.” You couldn’t have gotten my attention faster if it said, “Free Motorboating” at a Christina Hendricks convention. One unique Scotch later, I felt as warm and feisty as the opening riff to this song. <br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/Qm2oBSCtImg" target="_blank">3) “Untitled,” Interpo</a></b>l. I had to drive out to my actual office in Hawkeye territory this week, and on the way back, I played my “Best of the Aughts” mix on my iPod—the full 200-song mix that <a href="http://cjsd.blogspot.com/2009/12/friday-favorite-11-2-favoritist-of.html" target="_blank">I later edited down</a>. This song came up, and I realized that it was not only ten years old, but that I was having nostalgia for early 2000s music. I thought, <i>Wow, this really takes me back to my thirties</i>. That seemed all kinds of wrong.&nbsp;<div><br /></div><div><b><a href="http://youtu.be/yv1ugBQdSKU" target="_blank">4) “Call the Doctor,” Sleater-Kinney</a></b>. I in fact did see my doctor today. I have added a cholesterol-lowering drug to my high-blood-pressure medication (<i>Wow, this song really takes me back to my thirties when I only took drugs that didn't require a&nbsp;prescription.</i>) The blood pressure stuff is relatively cheap, subsidized by my insurance, but the cholesterol meds are $50 a month after insurance. I feel like my provider is telling me, <i>Hey, we understand that there’s salt on everything, but we ain’t gonna pay for your bacon addiction, Porkins</i>. <br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/fAKFSnQdhvE" target="_blank">5) “The Bends,” Radiohead</a></b>. Between Thanksgiving and Christmas, I gained about ten pounds. I was in a perfect storm of fat-assery—TLB cranking out huge quantities of cookies with meth-lab speed, every meal being served in a casing of fried cheese, and lots and lots of fermented holiday cheer. I stepped on the scale after Christmas and was almost at a weight that <a href="http://youtu.be/HCsML8UMeQA" target="_blank">Louis C.K. used in his act </a>to poke fun at himself of being a fat mess. That actually triggered enough motivation to start losing weight, stepping on the scale and hearing punchlines about how much dong I’d service for a case of Ding Dongs. So using WWLCKS (What Would Louis C.K. Say) works much better as my healthy eating motivation than WWMJMSMWHP (What Would Make Jillian Michaels Slap Me With Her Penis). <br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/hC8iSpwZQjk" target="_blank">6) “Roxanne (live),” Sting</a></b>. One of my favorite live performances ever, solo Sting on an electric guitar. So good I won’t cock it up with a dick joke. <br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/dzDihi17EY8" target="_blank">7) “My Year in Lists,” Los Campesinos!</a></b>. When (if) I’m 80, I wonder if I will still be list obsessed. I think in lists all the time now. Hell, I spent December trying to get the order of my favorite songs from 2012 in order. Will this ever go away? I guarantee my grandparents never did shit like sit around and list Top Five Abbot &amp; Costello movies or Top Ten Blacklisted Writers You Would Sleep With. Will it fade with age, or will I be telling the orderlies Top Ten Movies About Old People Being Disappeared by Their Monstrous Children?<br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/i_evk2R4wGU" target="_blank">8) “An Ode to No One,” Smashing Pumpkins</a></b>. Billy Corgan <a href="http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-01-14/news/ct-talk-smashing-neon-0114-20130114_1_neon-signs-corgan-hot-water" target="_blank">opened a tea house</a> at the end of my street. Why? Because he’s Billy Fuckin’ Corgan, has millions of dollars, and <a href="http://gothamist.com/2012/07/23/5_years_ago_bill_oreilly_was_amazed.php" target="_blank">wants some green tea, motherfucker</a>. Anyway, TLB does her writing there occasionally, and she’s seen BC twice. That made me we want to go there so I could bump into him and tell him how much I agreed with <a href="http://youtu.be/dFqmHoN0cEo" target="_blank">his feelings about Rush</a>, and we’d bond, and then the next time Rush was in town, he’d be like, “I should go with Brando.” He’d of course have backstage passes, and I’d meet the Trinity, and then I could die. Really, it’s a flawless plan. Anyway, today I finally went there, and there was no Billy Corgan. There wasn’t even James Iha bussing tables. I felt robbed and feel like he should post office hours. <br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/mzvV2cnR0IQ" target="_blank">9) “Rats,” METZ</a></b>. Sometimes I buy albums because I want to like them. METZ are loud, angry, and sound like PiL turned up to 11. That sounds like it should be a 7-10 split to my ears. Almost every time I do that, however, I never actually like the album. In fact, I enjoyed listening to Kidz Bop with Libby last night much more than the three minutes I spent listening to this. <br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/IBlxkdPPJ-c" target="_blank">10) “1963,” New Order</a></b>. From <i>Substance, Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying About My Heterosexuality and Love Synth Pop</i>. I had the rock-lover’s reflexive hate of all things electronic, but <i>Substance</i> showed me that it was okay to not only like keyboards and drum machines, but also to elevate my hands from my sides to over my head while dancing. <br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/N1tTN-b5KHg" target="_blank">11) “Sledgehammer,” Peter Gabriel.</a></b> TLB and I were in the market for a new mattress, as the one we had began to sink in the middle—<i>from all the action happening there! High five!</i> I was online doing some research on different mattress types, and I came across a ranking site that had a bunch of criteria like Durability, Heat Absorbtion, Comfort, and so on. They had not one but multiple rankings for having sex on the various mattresses, including Allows Multiple Positions and Active Sex Friendly, because you definitely don’t want a mattress that’s Inactive Sex Friendly. I couldn’t tell you whether memory foam is a good comfort choice, but I can tell you it gets an A for Sexual Discretion, a majorly important rating when your children are one hallway width away from wondering what that squeaking is and walking into a lifetime of expensive therapy. However, I was really confused by one rating, Allows for Faster Climax, because who is climaxing faster? And if it is for him, does any heterosexual couple ever buy that mattress? <br /><br />Due to that ambiguity, we had to research this ourselves, and now we have been banned from every American Mattress in America. <br /><br />Have a good weekend! <a href="http://youtu.be/Zce-QT7MGSE" target="_blank">And here's a little something that football and non-football fans can enjoy</a>.&nbsp;</div>Brandohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10484284471046027179noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12562069.post-51320573663820121312013-01-11T16:47:00.000-06:002013-01-11T16:47:19.603-06:00Friday Favoritist 11 of 2012<i>With the bonus </i>Extra Padding EP!<br /><br />If time travel was possible, I would like to go back to the start of 2012, find myself, and punch my face right in the nose. While my 2012 self laid on the floor asking what the fuck my problem was, 2013 Brando would deliver this message: Shut up, you fucking baby!<br /><br />The reason why I could have used that punch in the nose is because I let way too many things get to me this year. I’ve always had a complex about aging, but this was the first year where I felt aged. I got fatter. I had to turn up my music a little louder. I noticed that the gray-to-dark chest hair ratio was rapidly increasing. I got wigged out enough about my mortality enough that I thought I was having a heart attack.<br /><br />Then there was the lack of accomplishment list. Not finishing my novel. Letting my blog go fallow. Reading less. Feeling like I wasn’t working hard enough. I was hosting my own negative self image party with an open whine bar.<br /><br />Why do I make myself crazy? The Lovely Becky thinks it’s because I like to make myself sad, that somehow this makes me “serious” and “brooding” and “artistic” instead of a guy who could literally make every Top 10 Tuesday a list of boner puns (instead of 80% boner puns) and who makes people laugh via boner puns.<br /><br />Reaching the end of 2012, I realized what an idiot I was (am). Sure, I got fatter, but I also had a stress test done after my heart thingy and found that I was perfectly normal (thank you for lowering that fitness bar, Fat America). My performance review was strong to quite strong. The blog did suffer, but I also produced 150 pages of material for my novel, and frankly, it’s better than Veep (which I like). In fact, I’m already prepping for my Colbert Bump. My daughter thinks I’m hilarious without the use of boner puns, and my wife thinks I’m still a “sex god” (I may be paraphrasing). I went through a psychological Dante’s <i>Inferno</i>, only instead of going through hell, I went up my ass until I reached my head, then lead it back out of my butt. (Maybe that’s more of a <i>Poseidon Assventure</i>.) Now I think 2013 is going to be the best year of my life so far, all by simply telling myself to get confidence, stupid.<br /><br />Throughout the year, music gave me more comfort than it has in a while, maybe ever. It was therapy, release, a call to arms, an armistice, a fountain of youth, and a reminder that getting older is actually a good thing. So here are 17 of my favorites, a Brando dozen that got me through the year, with long-winded fits of navel gazing to explain why you should look beyond my belly lint at some of these fine tunes.<br /><br /><b>The <i>Extra Padding</i> EP&nbsp;</b><br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/F1obEt5dmmo" target="_blank">17) “Kicking,” Torche</a></b>. I had been calling these guys <i>Tor-SHAY</i> all year, because I assumed that the <i>e</i> on the end made it all Francophony. Then in finding a video for this song, I found a clip of the singer pronouncing it <i>torch</i>. That made me feel like a dingleberry and reminded me of the time I pronounced biplanes as <i>bip-planes</i> in front the entire eighth-grade class, which my friend Tom still teases me about, even though he’s the idiot who thought Piers Anthony’s <i>Centaur Aisle</i> was <i>Centaur Ay-sill</i>. I swear, I never have the upper hand on my friends. Anyway, this song by <i>Tor-chuh</i> is as kicking as the title, a lighter Helmet that’s like downtuned power pop. <br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/NQAMCOm2wyo" target="_blank">16) “Turn It Around,” The Men</a></b>. I had a transcendent fantasy football experience this year. Yes, that sentence is idiotic, and yes, I put way too much time, effort, and importance into the dumbest pastime I engage in, but when it all goes well, I feel like I could slay 40,000 Philistines with Brandon Funston’s Big Board (that is an actual thing). And it went so very, very well, because I traded for Adrian Peterson this season. It involved three teams, took two weeks, and required dozens of cajoling e-mails, texts, and phone calls. It resulted with me having a roster featuring Calvin Johnson, AP, and Robert Griffin III, which in layman’s terms is God, Purple Jesus, and the Holy Shit! Spirit. After that trade, I went on a six-game winning streak where I laid waste to the league like stoner zombies at a brain buffet. Well, this song makes me feel like I did right after I made that trade: shot out of a cannon, through a brick wall, and onto a throne sitting atop a pyramid made out of the other nine humps in our league.<br /><br />Of course, I lost in the finals 175-to-motherfucking-150 because the lucky SOB I played exploded like Borat after letting his wife out of a marriage sack. I hate fantasy football. <br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/6Bmg3h7RSM4" target="_blank">15) “I’ll Be Alright,” Passion Pit.</a></b> I’m not the only one who was a little nuts this year. The Passion Pit dude also suffered some major freakout, along with the Killers guy and Billie Joe Dookie of Green Day. I wonder if their angst was as manufactured as mine? Is there something in us that, as society has generally gotten more safe, we still feel the need to feel threatened? Did they have ennui back in the Middle Ages, when death lurked around every corner with nasty, sharp, pointy teeth? Was their ever this exchange: <br /><br /><i>Scene: A monastery in medieval England. Clement the Insecure is farming with Cuthbert the Well-Adjusted.</i><div><br /></div><div>CLEMENT: I just don’t know what it all means, Cuthbert. Is this all we’re put on this earth for? Sowing seeds, milking cows? I’m 19 and I’ve never even been further than Cornwall.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>CUTHBERT: Cornwall’s overrated. Hey, watch it with that scythe!&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>CLEMENT: Sorry. I mean, I used to just dream about stuff like seeing a woman’s naked calf, but now I don’t even care about that.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>CUTHBERT: Dude, you’re a calf virgin? We’ve got to get you some calf.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>CLEMENT: It just all feels so pointless.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>CUTHBERT: Yeah, well don’t look now, but it’s about to get a lot more pointed. Those are the longboats of Erik the Bumstuffer.<br /><br />CLEMENT: Oh God! I love my life! I want to live!&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>CUTHBERT: You won’t if he captures you alive. Run!<br /><br />Yeah, being 42, married, warm, well fed, and unlikely to be impaled seems like a pretty silly thing to get upset about.<br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/sXnE0UAzQLQ" target="_blank">14) “Groundhog Day,” The Corin Tucker Band</a></b>. Like running into an old friend at the co-op. If I play this back-to-back with <a href="http://youtu.be/q25zB3lJqgY" target="_blank">Wild Flag</a>, it’s like having my own Sleater-Kinney reunion. <br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/F15IjgyHd60" target="_blank">13) “Thinkin’ ‘Bout You,” Frank Ocean</a></b>. I’m not immune to hype. <i>Channel Orange</i> was probably the most hyped album of the year, and after the Grammy nomination, I decided I should finally see what all the fuss was about. Turns out it was well deserved. There is so much soul packed into this album and especially this song, I think it’s impossible not to be a least slightly moved by it. <br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/efsUakRY2IQ" target="_blank">12) “Foreigner,” Pallbearer</a></b>. Twelve-and-a-half minutes of heavy-ass Sabbath prog. The riffs could move mountains, the vocals could soar over them, and the lyrics include the phrase “arcane thrones.” I completely failed my saving throw against swooning when I heard this. It’s the kind of song that makes me wish the back of my wardrobe really opened into a mystical world, just so I could play this on my iPod before I hoist my two-handed sword Nutripper against the Arch-Daemon Cobbagus for control of Brandonia. <br /><br /> <b>The Final Countdown</b><br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/Y18C089tt9Y" target="_blank">11) “The Only Place,” Best Coast</a></b>. It is the equivalent of liking a California tourism commercial, but fuck if this isn’t the catchiest tune I heard all year. After hearing that chorus, indeed, why would you live anywhere else? Although there should be an extended version that says <i>We’ve got the gangs/got the quakes/got the debt/we’ve got the shakes</i>. <br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/SZoHSce004M" target="_blank">10) “The Keepers,” Santigold</a></b>. Nothing encapsulates America in 2012 like <a href="http://gawker.com/5974933/this-is-america-watch-as-yet-another-school-shooting-literally-interrupts-yet-another-conversation-about-gun-control" target="_blank">seeing breaking news of a school shooting during a televised discussion arguing against gun control</a>. The conservative solution is apparently <a href="http://youtu.be/WoazkUVZW9k" target="_blank">this</a>, where everyone is “safe” because everyone is armed. We’re moving toward a future where every performance review will need to be conducted behind bulletproof glass with cover from an HR sniper, lest a firing lead to “FIRE!” This song could serve as the lead single for that soundtrack.<br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/62SfBbSpxxM" target="_blank">9) “We Can’t Have Nice Things,” Kelly Hogan</a></b>. A tremendous voice and a terrific attention to detail made this my standout track from a standout album. The quiet resignation in her voice really makes the sadness shout, an acknowledgement that things are probably not going to get better, so why not make the best of them?<br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/tS4RPbg-EI8" target="_blank">8) “Gates,” The Menzingers</a></b>. The Lovely Becky, who is quite lovely, bought me a pretty fabulous Christmas present: a new receiver with network capability, so I can stream music upstairs from iTunes. Of course, I had to just show her how we can play ANYTHING WE WANT in the living room. This also led to me playing some new tracks for her, because even with my wife, I like to be The Old Guy Who Knows About New Music.<br /><br />TLB: Who are The Menzingers?<br /><br />Me: Oh, that’s a great album. Not sure you’d like it, though. They’re a little emo.<br /><br />TLB: Since when do I not like a little emo?<br /><br />Quite fucking true. Sure, I don’t want to hear screamo screeds about why she won’t call or they don’t understand or that our love is more broken than our 4G reception. But catchy, lonesome pop-punk song about throwing your soul back to that girl you wanted? Please, sir, can I have some more?<br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/JjuWFWpad5Q" target="_blank">7) “Shivers,” Divine Fits</a></b>. Nothing says <i>Are you ready to rock?!</i> like an opening line <i>I’ve been contemplating suicide</i>. Jesus Christ, maybe I am living the <i>High Fidelity</i> conundrum of making myself miserable because I listen to pop music. Of course, as our singer quickly explains, suicide is not his style, so we’re all good. This is a cover of <a href="http://youtu.be/PobTtBzdiyo" target="_blank">a Nick Cave song</a>, whose version feels like Prince covering Bauhaus. I prefer this more earthy version, which feels more smoky bar than empty cathedral. <br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/_Mj0TIEpJHk" target="_blank">6) “Pirates,” Jenny Owen Youngs</a></b>. While I like to be The New Music Guy, I’m pretty obvious in my sources for new music info. I look up stuff on Metacritic, Pitchfork’s Best New Music (because even assholes sometimes produce meaningful shit), the Onion AV Club (which has the comments section Pitchfork deserves), and so on. I don’t really care how I find something I like—the liking is the key—but I do love the happy surprise, the accidental discovery of a musician I wind up loving who had a 95% of going completely overlooked by me were it not for lucky coincidence. That was Jenny Owen Youngs last year. I don’t even remember how I found her album—I think it was just some random browsing on eMusic—but once I heard this song, I was hooked. There just isn’t that much good, straightforward, guitar-driven, propulsive pop music that sounds like stuff I love while still sounding fresh. The whole album <i>An Unwavering Band of Light</i> is terrific. <br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/YiwcUdX7XMw" target="_blank">5) “Comeback Kid,” Sleigh Bells</a></b>. I have been a Culver’s fan for years, to the point where all other fast food burgers tasted like the horse that finished last. However, TLB and I discovered <a href="http://blogs.houstonpress.com/eating/2009/11/five_guys_burgers_and_fries_ne.php" target="_blank">Five Guys</a> this year, which now elevated shoving massive amounts of beef into my mouth to a quasi-religious experience (that may have come out wrong). This song was Five Guys for my ears. It’s just a burger—no more, no less—but it is delicious and creates an insatiable desire to repeat the experience. In fact, this has to be my most repeated song of the year. I had this CD in my car for the better part of six months, and there were trips where this would get played three or four times in a row. It’s catchy, has great vocals, distorted guitars, and has double-bass drums. And it doesn’t make my ass fat. <br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/vsmaTq-T4zE" target="_blank">4) “Wasted Days,” Cloud Nothings</a></b>. The hardest hitting song I heard. It’s a nine-minute monster that starts off in angry indie jangle, morphs into Whole-Lotta-Love-meets-SXSW freakout, and then charges back with a screaming punk climax that was my favorite musical minute of the year. There’s a universalism to the shouted line <i>I thought I would be more than this</i> that’s perfect for loan-saddled 20-something graduates wondering how they are going to get their post-college lives going as well as jaded 40-something bloggers. Fuck and yes.<br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/8MdhsCeasBQ" target="_blank">3) “The Descent,” Bob Mould</a></b>. This song is the 50-something guy at the gym with the gray hair who is ripped like a hurricane current and is doing reverse-forearm-pull-up-squat-shrugs in such a bad-ass fashion that it temporarily gives me a daddy complex. This is how I want to sound in 10 years, lean, mean, and mighty unclean. Well, not mighty unclean, because I’m pretty fastidious and if I miss my daily shower, I feel like a homeless Petri dish. So I want to be lean, mean, and age-appropriately groomed. Anyway, it was refreshing to hear, amid a revival of the 90s rock sound among the indie set, one of the godfathers of alternative show up and show the kids how it’s done. <br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/ZcFGrWjOX0E" target="_blank">2) “Headlong Flight,” Rush. </a></b>When I visited my brother Tickle in October, my cousins Youngblood and Zoolander (aka the Nasty Boyz) were visiting as well. After a night of drinking, we stayed up late playing cards (shockingly out of character, I know). Tickle was taking music requests to stream, so I told him to pull this up. My cousin Youngblood saw it was Rush and then said, “This is seven minutes long!” <br /><br /><i>That’s right you little shit, and you’re going to sit there and listen to every last second of it, because these guys are 60 and rock harder than your dad after downing a box of Viagra with a case of 5-Hour Energy. They’ve made 20 albums and they are better now than they were when your mom was still wiping your ass. They play for three hours, they can string together complete sentences, and they are nice guys. And this song kicks so much ass that you’d need an army of giant spiders plus a armada of giant squids to have enough appendages to match its butt-kicking awesomeness. So shut your Rumchata receptacle and show a little respect, or else I’ll speaker-fist your ears with 18-minutes of “Hemispheres.”</i><br /><br />I didn’t say that, because Youngblood is a good kid. Instead, I just smiled and said, “Yes it is. Suck it.”<br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/TRVCtbfuDqw" target="_blank">1) “The House That Heaven Built,” Japandroids</a></b>. I knew this would be my song of the year the first time I heard it. The astounding thing is how just two guys are able to pack so much of what I love about rock music into their songs: Monster riffs, epic drum fills, arena-shattering choruses, odes to drinking and being young, realizations that the party has to (and should) end, and Canadian-ness. No other song, not even a tour de force from my beloved Holy Trinity, filled me with as much joy as this song did in 2012. It’s refreshing to hear a rock album in the Age of Irony has such real emotion and isn’t afraid to be genuine. It’s impressive to hear such a huge sound made without much more than a couple of overdubs and a huge force of will. No matter what I’m doing when I hear this, my mental fists are pumping. It’s fitting that they called the album <i>Celebration Rock</i>, because that’s exactly what it is.<br /><br />So there it is. A good year for music, a good year of lessons for me. Here’s to being happier and healthier in 2013 and accepting the aging process.<br /><br />Except gray chest hair. Gray chest hair can eat a bag of follicles.</div>Brandohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10484284471046027179noreply@blogger.com25tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12562069.post-63159384651197112892013-01-09T14:17:00.001-06:002013-01-09T14:21:07.031-06:00Top Ten Wednesdays: What New Year’s resolutions have we already broken?<b>Special extra weak flesh edition!</b><br /><br />15) <a href="http://deadspin.com/5974000/brent-musburger-is-a-bit-too-infatuated-with-aj-mccarrons-girlfriend-katherine-webb" target="_blank">Reducing the blow-by-blow in our play-by-play</a>.<br /><div><br /></div><div>14) Using the treadmill without having takeout delivered to us.<br /><br />13)&nbsp;<a href="http://www.mediaite.com/tv/creator-of-deport-piers-morgan-flips-out-on-morgans-show-1776-will-commence-again-if-you-try-to-take-our-firearms/" target="_blank">Avoiding making Piers Morgan look sane and sympathetic</a>. <br /><br />12) <a href="http://www.examiner.com/article/woman-accused-of-beating-up-boyfriend-with-stick-over-bad-oral-sex" target="_blank">Not using sex as a weapon</a>. <br /><br />11) <a href="http://youtu.be/Icq0LlvtEy0" target="_blank">Not using Pat Benatar as a weapon</a>. <br /><br />10) Not using cheap, dated pop culture references in place of original thoughts.<br /><div><br /></div><div>9) <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/04/politics/obama-congress/index.html" target="_blank">Standing firm instead of reaching across the aisle to satisfy a stiff Boehner</a>.<br /><div><br /></div><div>8)&nbsp;<a href="http://wonkette.com/496153/alabama-sen-jeff-sessions-are-there-no-workhouses" target="_blank">Acting like less of a Dickensian</a>.<br /><div><br />7) Trying <i>hard</i> to be more sophisticated.<br /><br />6) Respecting boundaries in the champagne room. <br /><br />5) Finishing novel instead of converting it to Pinterest format. <br /><br />4) Using Mapquest to find the gym we signed up for last year. <br /><br />3) <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/08/stephen-colbert-bill-oreilly-asians-hawaii-liberal-video_n_2431708.html" target="_blank">Complimenting minorities without using the backs of our hands</a>. <br /><br />2) Doing that thing we’ve always wanted to do but have never gotten around to but are finally going to…ooh, <i>Keeping Up With the Kardashians</i> marathon! <br /><br />1) Writing funny blog posts.</div></div></div></div>Brandohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10484284471046027179noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12562069.post-4013448878042715492012-12-27T14:34:00.000-06:002012-12-27T14:34:25.214-06:00Top Ten Thursdays: What did we find stuffed in our stockings?<strong>Special extra 12 days of Christmas edition!</strong><br /><br />12) Subpeona.<br /><br />11) Box of rubbers with two missing.<br /><br />10) Phone pre-loaded with a video of our sister-in-law which was clearly meant for brother’s stocking.<br /><br />9) Copy of budget proposal with <a href="http://the-countdown-to-john-boehners-rocking-fiscal-cliff-eve/" target="_blank">an orange bronzer stain</a> that looks like face of Pontius Pilate.<br /><br />8) One pissed-off tarantula.<br /><br />7) Peppermint Xanax canes (thanks, sis!)<br /><br />6) Bottle containing the Ghost of Drunk Christmas Past, Present, and Future.<br /><br />5) A lump sum from the coal lobby.<br /><br />4)&nbsp;White Flower candle from Confederate Candle. <br /><br />3) Four-Finger Louie’s fifth finger (with bonus pinky ring).<br /><br />2) Brochure from Santa’s Village, the old folk’s home our ungrateful children are committing us to.<br /><br /> 1) Note saying, “Sry, naughty – S.C.”Brandohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10484284471046027179noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12562069.post-29022252848351998202012-12-21T17:08:00.001-06:002012-12-21T17:08:57.175-06:00Friday Random 11<i>It’s one more random than 10!&nbsp;</i><br /><br />I just gave this blog mouth to mouth and it Frenched me.<br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/R50P3V3pcFw" target="_blank">1) “Divine Intervention,” Matthew Sweet</a></b>. I’ve been away from blogging in part because I’ve been pounding away on something else (<i>that’s what she said!</i>). I am working pretty diligently at my dream of becoming a novelist, although my book would benefit greatly from vampires, zombies, suburban S&amp;M, or being a completely fictional memoir about my crippling addiction to Viagra (<i>A Million Little Boners</i>). However, while I am writing the kind of book that may only sell dozens of legally purchased copies in today’s publishing market, my secret wish is that it gets me on <i>The Daily Show</i> and/or <i>The Colbert Report</i>. I honestly think if, just before Jon Stewart interviewed me, he shook my hand, I would seriously consider getting my hand amputated, stuffed, and mounted next to a picture of the handshake. But then if I later got invited onto Colbert, I’d have to shake hands with my hook. I’m not sure if that would increase my chances of getting on the show.<br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/2O-BwV0DDUY" target="_blank">2) “Roll Away Your Stone,” Mumford &amp; Sons</a></b>. I’ve had a little bit of my M&amp;S fill. They are good, don’t get me wrong, but I feel like I do about The Black Keys—pleasant band who become big when there are so many more deserving candidates. This sometimes feels like Coldplay covering The Pogues, and it is a testament to The Pogues that even hearing Coldplay covering “The Sunny Side of the Street” would still have a strong awesome quotient. They are a classic band I don’t mind hearing but never decide to play. <br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/Iae3iFwSSZU" target="_blank">3) “The Roar of the Masses Could Be Farts,” Minutemen</a></b>. Okay, seriouspants rant: The title pretty much sums up my feelings about the post-Sandy Hook debate, because we’re not going to change enough to change the fucked up gun culture of this country. <br /><br />I have never been so saddened by a tragedy as this one, because it involved such innocent victims falling to the clusterfuck stupidity of our country. It was so <i>easy</i> for a sick individual to kill two dozen people. Why? Because he had no trouble obtaining his weapons from his mother, who was a “gun enthusiast.” Not anymore, I’ll bet. That’s harsh, but at the same time, if she didn’t feel the need to own multiple military-grade firearms, maybe her fuckhole son would have just hung himself or stabbed her or done something that didn’t involve killing 20 first-graders because he couldn’t have shot his way into the school and committed his massacre in two minutes thanks to his trusty high-capacity Bushmaster assault rifle. I think if we could audit every “law-abiding citizen” who owns a gun and see how they store their firearms, we’d collectively shit our pants and mandate fingerprint locks on every weapon if we didn’t actually ban them outright.<br /><br />So now we're going to have a debate and maybe we’ll take assault rifles off the market and reduce clip sizes, but that won’t do shit. People will still get killed in workplaces and malls and schools, there will just be more handguns used and more reloading. And then the fucktarded gun rights idiots will say, <i>See, we told you</i>. And they’ll suggest that if only the director of human resources/kindergarten teacher/Hot Topic clerk had been armed, they could have prevented the tragedy. Ignoring of course the possibility of psychotic workers/students/Orange Julius patrons from wrestling a gun away from the law abiding citizen carrying it, eliminating that pesky background check. But hey, what can you do, it’s in the Constitution, holmes. That shit’s, like, permanent. <br /><br />The irony is that the Second Amendment is supposed to protect us from tyranny, and yet how much tyranny has it subjected us to? What other part of the Constitution has that much blood on it? Instead, gun sales reach a record high after Sandy Hook. Instead, gun owners are jizzing over a story about a guy who says, because he pulled his gun, <a href="http://www.kgw.com/news/Clackamas-man-armed-confronts-mall-shooter-183593571.html" target="_blank">the Oregon mall shooter decided to kill himself</a>, when no one can answer that except the guy who ate a bullet. (A lot of conservative sites say that story <i>proves</i>&nbsp;that guns prevent crime. Shit, I wish they were that lenient about the fossil record or climatology studies.)&nbsp;They will say that guns help deter criminals every day, without considering the converse that guns enable criminals every day. The same people who don’t trust teachers to discuss a pee-pee entering a hoo-hah or that we have a lot in common with monkeys want those people to be ready to drop hot lead at a moment’s notice. We have to make hard decisions about whether we give old people money or poor kids health care, but fuck if we can do anything about all these goddamned guns laying around, because if we do, only criminals will have them, because <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2012/12/14/schoo-shooting-how-do-u-s-gun-homicides-compare-with-the-rest-of-the-world/" target="_blank">look at the rampant gun crime in the rest of the industrialized world</a>. No, we’d better take the same approach that East Africa does, because that’s worked out so well. <br /><br />I don’t have the answers, I don’t have a solution, and I’m not even necessarily against banning guns. But we’re not going to have a real conversation on putting limits and safeguards on gun ownership, because America! Freedom! Flag! <br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/Y86gw9xblsI" target="_blank">4) “Hateful,” The Clash</a></b>. Am I bugging you? I didn’t mean to bug you. Joe Strummer, play the blues.&nbsp;<div><br /></div><div><b><a href="http://youtu.be/K6vHIEwsai0" target="_blank">5) “Vaccine,” Ladyhawke</a></b>. I really hate a sophomore slump from a band whose debut I loved. I am like an anti-hata who will try to convince myself it needs a few listens, that it’s a “grower,” because I want that first album experience again. Sadly, this was really a Mehdyhawke album. <br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/1tQGA1eAbMM" target="_blank">6) “The Wind Cries Mary,” The Jimi Hendrix Experience</a></b>. I hate business jargon. I have to use it because I work for a business, so I have to say shit like <i>FYI</i> and <i>talk offline</i> and <i>PowerPoint</i>. Sometimes when we have meetings and actually come up with action points, we label some as <i>just do its</i>. a saying made popular by the philosopher Nike. I hate that one most of all; however, the biggest just do it of all that we’re just starting to do is legalize pot. How can we be called the Land of the Free when you are not able to listen to a classic Jimi Hendrix song the way its creator intended? Now that may become a reality in a select few states. Praise the Lord and pass the Funyuns. <br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/_rIKclL9Fcg" target="_blank">7) “That’s Entertainment,” Morrissey</a></b>. This cover of The Jam classic was beautifully recorded in Mopely Digital. <br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/IC6m8M3Iw_k" target="_blank">8) “Encore,” Jay-Z</a></b>. I bought the new NBA 2k13 game. I normally play a season mode, but I didn’t want to be reminded that Derrick Rose is out for MONTHS with a knee injury every time I played a game to escape the fact that Derrick Rose is out for MONTHS with a knee injury (not to mention having bad pink jersey flashbacks). So I decided to play the career mode where you make yourself as an NBA player, get drafted, try to get better, acquire an entourage, pull a groin in the champagne room, and so on. The game cleverly gets around announcing your name by allowing you to choose from a big list of nicknames that get announced instead. I picked “The Beast,” and it is so satisfying to see my little doppelganger being called that every time I make a J from the top of the key. I wish I could have those announcers calling me The Beast when I crack a good dick joke or open a difficult jar for TLB.<br /><br />Anyway, the 2k13 game was executive produced by Jay-Z, and if I had known rapping could have lead to producing videogames, I’d have grabbed the mic when I was a teenager. Although there’s not a lot that rhymes with “hobbit” or “mithril.” <br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/-O0YzZ37Kxo" target="_blank">9) “Country Road,” Toots &amp; the Maytals</a></b>. Translates remarkably well from twang to jah. <br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/m36qRP7zPEk" target="_blank">10) “Cuts Like a Knife,” Bryan Adams</a></b>. I like this. There, I said it. It’s complete cheese, not even like a block of cheese, but that red wine cheese food that comes in the plastic jar and is to hard to dip crackers in without breaking them in half. But I don’t care, and I can’t hear any mocking over my nah-nah-nahs at the end of the song. Bryan Adams also cannot hear them from atop the mountain of money where he lives. <br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/sV-3aGnF714" target="_blank">11) “Coming Up,” Paul McCartney</a></b>. TLB and I watched SNL last week with Macca as the musical guest. The two surprising things to me: <a href="http://www.hulu.com/watch/435939" target="_blank">I laughed really hard at a sketch</a> and I loved seeing McCartney play with 2/3 of Nirvana plus Pat Smear. TLB didn’t quite revel in the latter performance the way I did and was not exactly unrestrained in her evaluation of his current or former musical ability. I prepared for a verbal salvo back at my lovely wife, but decided I would fight no more forever. Our Beatles feud was silly and worse for me, cockblocking. So I told her that I would no longer give her crap for her contrary about The Beatles being ZOMGFUCKINAMAZING! I believed we could coexist peacefully. The Middle East could learn a lot from us.&nbsp;</div><div><br />Happy Holidays, whether that involves a fat man in a suit, a baby in a manger, going to empty movie theaters, or feats of strength around a pole!</div>Brandohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10484284471046027179noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12562069.post-90122547691878143842012-11-14T17:11:00.002-06:002012-11-14T17:11:58.099-06:00Top Ten Wednesdays: Why were we relieved from duty?<br /><strong>Special Operation Endless Entendre Edition</strong><br /><br />15) <a href="http://wonkette.com/489695/david-petreaus-gen-john-allen-and-shirtless-fbi-agent-sent-sexy-emails-all-the-time-to-everyone" target="_blank">Deployed our troops to multiple unauthorized hot zones.</a><br /><br />14) Violated rules of engagement through use of stress positions with our assets.<br /><br />13) Removed restrictive intelligence briefs in order to facilitate going full commando.<br /><br />12) Received way too much blowback&nbsp;during undercover missions. <br /><br />11)&nbsp;Spent an inordinate amount of time investigating leads from the Militarily Intelligent Ladies File.<br /><br />10) Started as a military observer, but got sucked into conducting an insurgency into the bush.<br /><br />9)&nbsp;Added whips to the chain of command.<br /><br />8) Procured lucrative military contract for Adam and Eve.<br /><br />7) Redirected spy satellites to scope out topless beaches for babes.<br /><br />6) Kept labeling self as a hard target.<br /><br />5) Diverted funds to form all-female SEAL Team 69.<br /><br />4)&nbsp;Leaked our homemade&nbsp;video of&nbsp;our&nbsp;insertion team engaging in some excessive wet work.<br /><br />3) Ordered attractive WMD experts to search for a huge bunker buster in our pants.<br /><br />2) Set DEFCON status to “HORNY”<br /><br />1) Put the <a href="http://gawker.com/5959539/watch-anne-hathaway-spoof-homeland-on-snl" target="_blank">Homeland</a> into Homeland Security.Brandohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10484284471046027179noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12562069.post-18420129151742973162012-11-06T12:45:00.001-06:002012-11-06T12:45:35.967-06:00Top Ten Tuesdays: How are we voting?10) <strong>Republican</strong>, because the best preparation for <a href="http://www.nbc.com/revolution/" target="_blank">a future without electricity</a> is a government that’s already medieval.<br /><br />9) <strong>Democrat</strong>, because we need to know we can buy rubbers after the bars close.<br /><br />8) <strong>Libertarian</strong>, because hands off my shit or I’ll fucking cut you.<br /><br />7) <strong>Green</strong>, because, dude.<br /><br />6) <strong>Constitution</strong>, because we are also old white people who take a dim view toward blacks.<br /><br />5) <strong>Tea</strong>, because FREEDOM TAXES DEBT GUNS ILLEGALS JESUS BLARGH!!!<br /><br />4) <strong>Independent</strong>, because we love Burger King’s hamburgers but prefer McDonald’s fries.<br /><br />3) <strong>Socialist</strong>, because these student loans aren’t going to forgive themselves.<br /><br />2) <strong>Romney</strong>, because we want a president we could play polo with.<br /><br />1) <strong>Obama</strong>, because his skin looks like our favorite drink at Starbucks and he’s twice as smooth.Brandohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10484284471046027179noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12562069.post-31849681328094682142012-11-02T19:35:00.001-05:002012-11-02T19:35:27.029-05:00Friday Random 11<em>It’s one more random than 10!</em><br /><br />I’m in blur central right now, and not the good <a href="http://youtu.be/SSbBvKaM6sk" target="_blank">“Woo-hoo!” late-90s kind</a>. I seriously have no idea where the last two months have gone. I had no intention of taking a break from the blog, but the break sort of happened. There are the usual suspects—time, work, kids, football season and the obsessive fantasy management that follows. There was another suspect, my novel, which is moving along fairly well and occupying the brain cells allocated for joke production. But the bigger issue is that I felt like I didn’t have much to say, or that I was saying was repeating what I’ve said before (insert, "When has that stopped you before?" joke). I had increasing instances of writing things like the Top Tens or Random 11s and wondering if I was reusing a previous joke. I mean, I find “cock” and it’s many variations wildly hilarious, but there’s a point where I have to wonder if I’m sucking all the nutrients out of the fertile dick joke soil (<em>that’s what she said!</em>)<br /><br />Sure enough, after a little time of letting the field lie fallow, some things started popping into my head. However, I then ran into that laziness like when you stop working out because you went on vacation. I kept thinking, “I’ll blog tomorrow” and tomorrow turned into next week and next week turned into next month, and next thing I know my little Circle Jerk at the Square Dance is instead dancing by itself. Now my sense of blog humor feels a bit bloated, sluggish, and full of processed cheese, but I’m going to attempt to hop up on the comedy treadmill and sweat out some bon mots. Hopefully I won’t pull anything (<em>that’s what she—ow, my taint muscle!</em>)<br /><br /><strong><a href="http://youtu.be/izJNQKNhFII" target="_blank">1) “All the Young Dudes,” Mott the Hoople</a></strong>. I recently saw my brother Tickle and our two twenty-something cousins, Youngblood and Zoolander, who Tickle has dubbed The Nasty BoyZ. The Nasty BoyZ are young and nubile athletes, both former college hockey players who have always been athletic. We went out to play some two-on-two basketball, the Old DudeZ (Tickle just turned 35) vs. The Nasty BoyZ. Tickle is a very good basketball player and in good shape, but my current physical condition and lifelong inability to dribble render me the pick-up equivalent of <a href="http://youtu.be/Zt7kHsZGk6E" target="_blank">Kate Capshaw in <em>Temple of Doom</em></a>. There’s a lot of breathless screaming and scenery chewing and wishing I would just die by the end of the first reel. In fact, within the first few minutes of playing, suicide seemed painless compared to the air I was shotgunning in mouth-filling gulps. However, I am nothing if not a team player. I set picks, rebound, and generally try to harass as much as possible on defense. I also think the Nasty BoyZ were taking it easy on us, and Tickle and I won our first game in the best-of-five we played.<br /><br />Midway through the second game, the FILFs (Fathers I’d Like to Fastbreak) shot up 8-2. Not only was Tickle unconscious with his outside shots, but I reached into some bag of homeboy magic and pulled out some respectable jumpers, layups, and even a sky hook. Right then, Youngblood flipped a switch and went into super competitive mode. In fact, The Nasty BoyZ are notorious for never passing to each other and then arguing that the other person is hogging shots. I joked before the game that Vegas set the over for their total assists at 1 and that I pounded the under. Not so this time. They set screens, backdoored (<em>hey now!</em>), and really tried to win. They came back and won the second game, and I figured it was nice while it lasted.<br /><br />Surprisingly, though, I found a desire to win surpassing my desire to lay down and die. Right then, I decided hitting a winning runner over Zoolander before my heart shattered into a thousand heaving pieces wouldn’t be a bad way to go. I even started calling out plays like <a href="http://www.comedycentral.com/video-clips/e748yj/chappelle-s-show-true-hollywood-stories---prince" target="_blank">Prince in the <em>Chappelle Show</em> sketch</a> (“Computer Blue!” “Darling Nikki!”). We beat the Nasty BoyZ in game three, and then in the decisive game four, I called out for “Computer Blue” again, passing to Tickle, who got nothing but net on the winning jumper. I felt like I’d just won a gold medal. The Nasty BoyZ were good sports, too, which is easy when you have young legs and washboard abs and don’t equate some meaningless pickup game with a triumph over your mortality. <br /><br /><strong><a href="http://youtu.be/OffZRdPUnLw" target="_blank">2) “Calling It Quits,” Aimee Mann</a></strong>. I could use their washboard abs this week, because the pipes under my laundry room decided to call it quits (how is that for some transition offense?!). We had some water backup in our basement and <em>yadda yadda yadda</em> $13,000 worth of eventual plumbing repairs, half of which we need to do right now if we don’t want to take our dirty clothes to the Warshin’ Rock on Lake Michigan or TLB’s parents’ house. Plumbing repairs are doubly annoying because a) you don’t realize what a pain it is to lose using your washing machine or dishwasher until you face having to wash dishes by hand or (<em>shudder</em>) visit the laundromat, and b) you don’t get to see what you dropped an assload of money on. You buy a new roof or siding or a Drifter Composter, at least you get to see what you spent your money on. Although I’ll spend anything to avoid going to the laundromat. That feels like wearing condoms again. That’s for sailors, baby!<br /><br /><strong><a href="http://youtu.be/9Ge32E0xLg0" target="_blank">3) “Electric Band,” Wild Flag</a></strong>. Between this album last year and the new Corin Tucker album this year, I feel like Sleater-Kinney got back together, which is awesome. It’s the opposite of the way I felt when <a href="http://youtu.be/i1Qx-KzsC0U" target="_blank">The Firm</a> and <a href="http://youtu.be/f2wyYEnjeas" target="_blank">The Honeydrippers</a> released albums in the 80s, which almost made me wish Led Zeppelin had never existed. <em>Do you remember/ when we rocked / instead of sounding / like a bunch of old cocks?</em><br /><br /><strong><a href="http://youtu.be/bm64bg38xJo" target="_blank">4) “Jail Guitar Doors,” The Clash</a></strong>. It occurred to me that, if I do continue doing the Random 11, should I shift from my own collection to doing a Spotify 11? That made me sad and I’m not sure why. It is amazing that, at any time, at any place with an Internet or cellular connection (we even had <em>both</em> in the UP!), you can listen to almost anything you want. This would have made me ecstatic at 15 or 20 or even 30. Now, though, nostalgia is holding me back. Why, I don’t trust no music that gets beamed into my phone, dag gummit! It has to be my music, not some gosh-darned shared collection that I rent with a million other hipsters. That’s socialism. So, for now, I’m keeping it local.<br /><br /><a href="http://youtu.be/C6e5wxzPsQM" target="_blank"><strong>5) “Flowers in Your Hair,” The Lumineers</strong></a>. Perfectly pleasant, but I don’t know if that’s enough for me. My foot taps, the chorus sticks, and yet there’s something lacking. <br /><br /><strong><a href="http://youtu.be/6FFUwIrT0jg" target="_blank">6) “Caught, Can We Get a Witness?” Public Enemy</a></strong>. I watched one of the excellent ESPN 30 for 30 documentaries, <em><a href="http://espn.go.com/30for30/film?page=ghosts-of-ole-miss" target="_blank">Ghosts of Ole Miss</a></em>, about the year the Ole Miss football program went undefeated why the school nearly destroyed itself as James Meredith became the first black student in Ole Miss history. Watching stuff like this makes me really, really hate Tea Party crackers even more. Any pale fuckstick who complains about reverse racism or affirmative action or other <strong>#whitepeopleproblems</strong> should sit the fuck down and watch footage of James Meredith going to class surrounded by armed escorts while a sea of angry crackers looked hungry for a lynching. Even worse, he couldn’t hide his approach, because his enormous brass balls would clang every time he left for class. It’s a good thing for me white people don’t face real discrimination, because there is no way I would have the courage to do what he did. I just would have gotten a degree from University of Phoenix.<br /><br /><strong><a href="http://youtu.be/CjaPXihbORk" target="_blank">7) “Father Christmas,” The Kinks</a></strong>. People propose all kinds of idiotic Constitutional amendments, but we most definitely need one to block premature Christmas displays. I was at Tar-<em>jay</em> on October 30, looking for a costume (I was going as a procrastinator), and the Halloween stuff had been shoved into a two-aisle ghetto of bagged chocolate and flammable fabric so they could set up the Christmas displays. October fucking 30th! Think gay marriage is confusing to young people? What about conflating celebrating baby Jesus with slutty witch outfits? <br /><br /><strong><a href="http://youtu.be/2d21NgbsWus" target="_blank">8) “I’ve Changed My Address,” The Jam</a></strong>. This catchy little ditty is a pretty brutal tale of a guy ending his marriage (or engagement). I played this in the car recently and was singing along, which is funny considering this month marks the 25th anniversary of my first date with TLB. Not only is my middle name Monogamy, but I would rather stomp on my Xbox than make a woman cry. So why do I enjoy songs of malicious heartbreak so much? Do they touch some <em>Grand Theft Auto</em> nerve of wanting to run over pedestrians while evading the police and (if my joystick skills are good) the National Guard? Or is it just goofy fun with a catchy beat? My behavior would say the latter, but perhaps I should chase this with.... <br /><br /><strong><a href="http://youtu.be/OMD8hBsA-RI" target="_blank">9) “Faithfully,” Journey</a></strong>. I hate myself for loving this. It is about as schmaltzy as rock music gets and makes Foreigner look like death metal in comparison. Yet it tugs at my heart strings every time. Steve Perry misses her so much! It’s so hard to go on the road and not fuck anything that moves (<em>Honey, she had an all access pass. I only did it for the fans!</em>) No, I’m not crying! You’re a baby, you baby!<br /><br /><strong><a href="http://youtu.be/zda_oJQsHKU" target="_blank">10) “Spring Break,” The Fucking Champs</a></strong>. Get ready for tangent circle, but I wrote something today for the fantasy league that made me laugh, and this song triggered my desire to share it.<br /><br />Being a child of the 80s, I watched a lot of MTV. MTV also introduced me to the concept of “spring break,” because they used to have the MTV Spring Break specials that would feature things like the cast of <em><a href="http://youtu.be/-RCOMIKMW3Y" target="_blank">Remote Control</a></em> hosting a wet T-shirt contests. I also seem to recall Gilbert Gottfried doing spots for MTV Spring Break, his lunatic rantings about “naked people and sand” introducing me to The Voice. I became a fan instantly.<br /><br />Today, my fantasy league was e-mailing, and we were making fun of Uncle Andy, our oldest member. Uncle A is not really that old, only a couple years older than me, but he acts like an old man. His e-mails in particular are very elderly: they are in HUGE fonts and often make no sense. Today, Tickle said that Uncle Andy’s e-mails always reminded him of Gilbert Gottfried talking. Well, like a bolt of lightning, I had what I think is a pretty good Gilbert-style joke shoot into my head. I have to use all-caps because you can’t do Gilbert Gottfried in lowercase:<br /><br />AN OLD MAN GOES TO THE DOCTOR. HE SAYS, “DOCTOR, I THINK MY PENIS ISN’T WORKING PROPERLY.” THE DOCTOR SAYS, “WELL, AT YOUR AGE, YOU MAY BE HAVING PROSTATE PROBLEMS.”<br /><br />THE DOCTOR KNEELS DOWN AND STICKS A FINGER INTO THE OLD MAN’S&nbsp;ASSHOLE TO CHECK HIS PROSTATE. THE OLD MAN IMMEDIATELY GETS AN ERECTION AND EJACULATES ALL OVER THE DOCTOR.<br /><br />THE DOCTOR IS FURIOUS. AS HE WIPES THE OLD MAN’S&nbsp;LOVE JUICE&nbsp;OFF OF HIMSELF, HE SAYS, “WHY THE HELL DID YOU THINK THERE WAS A PROBLEM WITH YOUR PENIS WHEN YOU HAD NO PROBLEM GETTING AN ERECTION AND EJACTULATING ALL OVER ME? WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?”<br /><br />THE OLD MAN SLAPS HIS HEAD. “I’M SO SORRY, I SHOULD HAVE SAID I THINK I’M GETTING ALZHEIMER’S.”<br /><br />That’s the kind of quality comedy that I just need to share with the world. <a href="http://youtu.be/0fBScoUXeII" target="_blank">Here's the real Gilbert</a>, roasting George Takei with some hilarious and extremely&nbsp;impolitically correct jokes.<br /><br /><strong><a href="http://youtu.be/C8szRgIcYlY" target="_blank">11) “Anarchy in the U.K.,” The Sex Pistols</a></strong>. Is there any other vocal performance in the history of rock music that summons images of plaque and gum disease? You can practically hear how green Johnny Rotten’s teeth are. <br /><br />Have a great weekend!Brandohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10484284471046027179noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12562069.post-8430654275641651872012-10-05T15:57:00.003-05:002012-10-05T15:57:48.399-05:00Friday Random 11<i>It’s one more random than 10!&nbsp;</i><br /><br />We put the storm windows down last night. That’s the most depressing weather day of the year for me, because it’s like being put on weather death row. Of course, at least I’m doing it in October now instead of August.<br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/IhYVfxHviSw" target="_blank">1) “If You Want Blood, You Got It,” AC/DC</a></b>. Well hel-fucking-lo! One of my favorite AC/DC openings because the riff is all peppy, and then Bon Scott comes in sounding like a meth-addicted frog. If I was ever at a fancy dinner with a shady underworld character <a href="http://youtu.be/P53b_KKwxCs" target="_blank">a la Indiana Jones</a> and he poisoned me with a Coldplay martini (or, more likely, a Coldplay Cosmo), this would be the antidote. Bonus if I had to reach down TLB’s dress to get it because that’s such a Bon Scott move.<br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/AvQ-3uVX63c" target="_blank">2) “Strangers,” Portishead.</a></b> One of those beats where it is impossible to avoid the head bob. You could play this at a funeral for a puppy that pulled a busload of children out of a volcano, only to then get run over by the bus, and everyone would be bobbing through the tears. <br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/xwYlbqmeNj0" target="_blank">3) “Everywhere I Go,” The Call</a></b>. This song came out roughly around the time I learned to drive, and I could never not drive fast when I heard it. We owned a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_Type_2_(T3)" target="_blank">Vanagon</a> then, and the minute this song started, I punched it and made those four hamsters in the engine run as fast as possible. This is why you don’t give new drivers fast cars. Also, while I’m not blaming music for making me drive like I was in a real life version of <a href="http://youtu.be/YNWauOxMDl8" target="_blank">Spy Hunter</a>, music definitely me made want to drive like I had just stolen a sensible-if-underpowered family-style minivan. That’s why Libby will have no speakers in her first car. <br /><br /><b><a href="http://www.comedycentral.com/video-clips/e748yj/chappelle-s-show-true-hollywood-stories---prince" target="_blank">4) “When Doves Cry,” Prince</a></b>. I would enjoy Prince’s music much more if it didn’t make me think of Prince. What part of oily, permed, garden gnome in platform boots and a thong sounds sexy?<br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/ziDYVk5VxKc" target="_blank">5) “Fly By Night,” Rush</a></b>. First, I nearly <a href="http://youtu.be/VLnWf1sQkjY" target="_blank">jizzed in my pants</a> when I saw <a href="http://youtu.be/L5ThWzuKyqU" target="_blank">this commercial</a>. I’M NOT THE ONLY ONE WHO DOES THIS! I NO LONGER HAVE TO LIVE A LIFE OF SHAME AT THE STOPLIGHT DURING “TOM SAWYER.”<br /><br />Second, <a href="http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/04/rush-and-public-enemy-among-nominees-to-rock-hall-of-fame/" target="_blank">Rush is finally on the ballot for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame</a>. Our long North American nightmare may be over! Up until yesterday, I took the party line of <i>fuck those bitches, the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame is bullshit</i>. Today I’m like, <i>Let them in, you sons of bitches. Bumpuses!</i> Because I want my validation as a Rush fan. That’s sad, I know, but the documentary started it, and now that I see my favorite band being used to sell attractive German cars that need new electrical systems by the time you drive them home from the lot, I want even more mainstream acceptance. Plus, they are on the ballot with Public Enemy and N.W.A., and I really want to see an onstage medley of “911 Is a Joke/Fuck Da Police/Xanadu.”<br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/KNIZofPB8ZM" target="_blank">6) “Don’t Stand So Close to Me (orginal, non-asswipe version),” The Police</a></b>. My fantasy football league has four teachers in it, and one of them was a member of the Chicago Teacher’s Union. He is also our league treasurer, and like every fantasy league, we have The Guy Who Doesn’t Pay. That guy is <a href="http://cjsd.blogspot.com/2008/09/marriage-of-tickle.html" target="_blank">Pancake Z</a>, who has never, ever paid his dues, but somehow always wins enough to not owe money. It’s become such an issue we officially call them dueZ. So during the strike, we wanted our CTU member to march with a sign that said, “Z, pay your dueZ.” I would have plotzed if that would have shown up on the news (or newZ), but sadly, he didn’t do it.<br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/iBU-MxydbWQ" target="_blank">7) “Wrapped Up in Books,” Belle &amp; Sebastian</a></b>. TLB and I are both firmly immersed in novel writing right now, and for the first time, probably at about the same point in the process, pounding out a shitty first draft. This leads to a lot of book conversations, especially at night when we are supposed to be going to sleep but wind up talking characters and structure and dick jokes for 45 minutes (well, one of us talks about dick jokes). For me, though, it feels a lot like talking to a professional trainer about doing squats. One of us already has two novels published, including one that was a bestseller in Italy, and also teaches writing to people who pay extravagant private school prices. Hint: It’s not the one discussing dick jokes. I imagine it’s a bit like a married porn couple where everyone knows the wife but no one recognizes the husband until he drops his pants. <br /> <br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/r00ikilDxW4" target="_blank">8) “21 Guns,” Green Day</a></b>. I’ll tell you what’s killing rock and roll: it’s not downloading and mashups and dubstep and laptop beats. It’s one of the few bonafide rock stars we have <a href="http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/music/posts/la-et-ms-green-day-billie-joe-armstrong-rant-las-vegas-rehab-20120923,0,6169013.story" target="_blank">going into rehab</a> for <a href="http://youtu.be/THK9AITTDfI" target="_blank">swearing in public</a>. What. The. Fuck? Back in the golden age, that’s what stars did after getting out of rehab, because it meant they weren’t zonked out on some Mexican zoo tranquilizers that they got from David Crosby.<br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/O40JHRj5R0c" target="_blank">9) “Raging in the Plague Age,” Les Savy Fav</a></b>. Then there’s a song like this that shows rock and roll is not only not dead, it’s wielding a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bec_de_corbin" target="_blank">Bec de corbin</a> of awesomeness. Yes, I know my pole arms. Who wants to touch me?<br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/zQwRdqzeLf0" target="_blank">10) “Reunion,” M83</a></b>. One of the most John Hughes-ish of their many John Hughes-ish tunes. We let Libby watch some of <i>Ferris Bueller</i> the other day, partly because it’s harmless, partly because it’s set in Chicago and she needs to learn where she should ditch school, and partly because it didn’t involve any cartoon characters or animated animals. Anyway, it is an adventure to watch a movie like that with a four-year old, because they are a lot of questions, and Libby can’t ask a question without acting like she’s shouting it from the back of a townhall meeting. WHY DID THE GIRL KICK THE MAN WITH THE MUSTACHE IN THE FACE? WHY DID THAT BOY KICK THE CAR THROUGH THE WINDOW? WHY IS FERRIS BREAKING THE FOURTH WALL?<br /><br /><b><a href="http://youtu.be/0GN2kpBoFs4" target="_blank">11) “Go Your Own Way,” Fleetwood Mac</a></b>. Does Lindsey Buckingham have this set as his ringtone for Stevie Nicks? That would be both awesome and such an asshole move. Incidentally, I think they should have a <i>The Voice</i>-style show where the judges are all members of a band that had a bad break-up. Imagine Lindsey and Stevie on either side of Mick Fleetwood. Or Axl and Slash separated by Duff. I would definitely watch that.<br /><br /> Have a good weekend, and stay warm! Unless you already live someplace warm, in which case, suck it, you lucky bastard. Brandohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10484284471046027179noreply@blogger.com15